ARYAN RELIGIONS.
[Sidenote: Nature-worship.]
That morning speech of Belarius (in _Cymbeline_) might serve as an
illustration of a primitive religion, a nature-religion in its simplest
garb:
‘Stoop, boys: this gate
Instructs you how to adore the heavens, and bows you
To morning’s holy office: the gates of monarchs
Are arched so high, that giants may jet through
And keep their impious turbans on, without
Good-morrow to the sun. Hail, thou fair heaven!
We house i’ the rock, yet use thee not so hardly
As prouder livers do.’
Omit only that part which speaks the bitterness of disappointed hopes
which once centred round the doing as prouder livers do, and the rest
breathes the fresh air of mountain life, different altogether from our
life, free alike from its cares and temptations and moral
responsibilities. Belarius gazes up with an unawful eye into the
heavenly depths, and fearlessly pays his morning orisons. ‘Hail, thou
fair heaven!’ There is no sense here of sin, humility, self-reproach.
And in this respect--taking this for the moment as the type of an Aryan
religion--how strongly it contrasts with the utterances of Hebrew
writers! Is this the voice of natural as opposed to inspired religion?
Not altogether; for the Semitic mind was throughout antiquity imbued
with a deeper sense of awe or fear--awe in the higher religion, fear in
the lower--than ever belonged to the Aryan character. We see this
difference in the religions of Egypt and Assyria; and it will be
remembered that, when speaking of the earliest records of the Semitic
and Aryan races, we took occasion to say that it may very well have been
to their admixture of Semitic blood that the Egyptians stood indebted
for the mystic and allegorical part of their religious system; for among
all the Semitic people, whether in ancient or modern times, we may
observe a tendency--if no more--towards religious thought, and towards
thoughts of that mystic character which characterized the Egyptian
mythology.
But the Aryans grew up and formed themselves into nations, and developed
the germs of their religion apart from external influence, and in a land
which from the earliest times had belonged to them alone. Their
character, their religion, their national life, were their own; and
though in after-times these went through distinctive modifications, when
the stems of nations that we know, Greeks, Latins, Germans, and the
rest, grew out of the Aryan stock, they yet bore amid these changes the
memory of a common ancestry. The land in which they dwelt was favourable
to the growth of the imaginative faculties, and to that lightness and
brightness of nature which afterwards so distinguished the many-minded
Greeks, rather than to the slow, brooding character of the Eastern mind.
There, down a hundred hillsides and along a hundred valleys trickled the
rivulets whose waters were hurrying to swell the streams of the Oxus and
the Jaxartes. And each hill and valley had its separate community,
joined, indeed, by language and custom to the common stock, but yet
living a separate simple life in its own home, which had, one might
almost say, its individual sun and sky as well as hill and river. No
doubt in such a land innumerable local legends and beliefs sprang up,
and these, though lost to us now, had their effects upon the changes
which among the many branches of the race the Aryan mythology
underwent--a mythology which before all others is remarkable for the
endless diversity of its legends, for the infinite rainbow-tints into
which its essential thoughts are broken.
[Sidenote: Sky-and sun-gods.]
Despite these divergences, the Aryans had a common chief deity--the sky,
the ‘fair heaven.’ This, the most abstracted and intangible of natural
appearances, at the same time the most exalted and unchanging, seemed to
them to speak most plainly of an all-embracing deity. And though their
minds were open to all the thousand voices of nature, and their
imaginations equal to the task of giving a personality to each, yet
none, not even the sun himself, imaged so well their ideal of a highest
All-Father as did the over-arching heaven.
The traces of this primitive belief the Aryan people carried with them
on their wanderings. This sky-god was the Dyâus (the sky) of Indian
mythology, the Zeus of the Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans, and the
Zio, Tew, or Tyr of the Germans and Norsemen. For all these names are
etymologically allied. Zeus (gen. Dios) and Dyâus are from the same
root; so are Jupiter (anciently Diupiter) and the compound form
Dyâus-pitar (father Dyâus); and Zio and Tew also bear traces of the same
origin. Indeed, it is by the reappearance of this name as the name of a
god among so many different nations that we argue his having once been
the god of all the Atyan people. The case is like that of our word
_daughter_. As we find this reappearing in the Greek _thugatêr_, and the
Sanskrit _duhitar_, we feel sure that the old Aryans had a name for
daughter from which all these names are derived; and as we find the
Sanskrit name alone has a secondary meaning, signifying ‘the milker,’ we
conclude that this was the original meaning of the name for a daughter.
Just so, Zeus and Jupiter and Zio and Dyâus show a common name for the
chief Aryan god; but the last alone explains the meaning of that name,
for Dyâus signifies the sky.
This sky-god, then, stood to the old Aryans for the notion of a supreme
and common divinity. Whatever may have been the divinities reigning over
local streams and woods, they acknowledged the idea of one overruling
Providence whom they could only image to their minds as the
over-spreading sky. This, we may say, was the essential feature in their
religion, its chief characteristic; whereas to the Semitic nations, the
sun, the visible orb, was in every case the supreme god. The reason of
this contrast does not, it seems to me, lie _only_ in the different
parts which the sun played in the southern and more northern regions;
or, if it arises in the difference of the climate, it not the less forms
an important chapter in religious development. There are discernible in
the human mind two diverse tendencies in dealing with religious ideas.
Both are to be found in every religion, among every people; one might
almost say in every heart. The first tendency is an impulse upwards--a
desire to press the mind continually forward in an effort to idealize
the deity, but, by exalting or seeming to exalt Him into the highest
regions of abstraction, it runs the risk of robbing Him of all
fellowship with man, and man of all claims upon His sympathy and love.
Then comes the other tendency, which oftentimes at one stroke brings
down the deity as near as possible to the level of human beings, and
leaves him at the end no more than a demi-god or exalted man. One may be
called the metaphysical, the other the mythological tendency; and we
shall never be able to understand the history of religions until we
learn to see how these influences interpenetrate and work in every
system. They show at once that a distinction must be drawn between
mythology and religion. The supreme god will not be he of whom most
tales are invented, because, as these tales must appeal to human
interests and relate adventures of the human sort, they will cling more
naturally round the name of some inferior divinity. The very age of
mythology--so far as regards the beings to whom it relates[56]--is
probably rather that of a decaying religion.
In any case, there will probably be a metaphysical and a mythological
side to every system. Thus among the Egyptians, Amun, the concealed, was
the metaphysical god; but their mythology centred round the names of
Osiris and Horus. And just so with the Aryans, the sky was the original,
most abstracted, and most metaphysical god; the sun rose into prominence
in obedience to the wish of man for a more human divinity. If the
Semitic people were more inclined toward sun-worship, the Aryans
inclined rather toward heaven-worship; and the difference is consistent
with the greater faculty for abstract thought which has always belonged
to our race.
The two influences of which we have spoken are perfectly well marked in
Aryan mythology. The history of it may almost be said to represent the
rivalry between the sky-gods and the gods of the sun. It is on account
of his daily change that the last far less becomes the position of a
supreme god. Born each day in the east, faint and weak he battles with
the clouds of morning; radiant and strong he mounts into the midday sky;
and then, having touched his highest point, he turns to quench his beams
in the shadowy embrace of night. Even the Egyptians and Assyrians, in
view of these vicissitudes, were driven to invent a sort of abstract
sun, separated in thought from the mere visible orb. This daily course
might stand as an allegory of the life of man. The luminary who
underwent these changing fortunes, however great and godlike in
appearance, must have some more than common relationship with the world
below; he must be either a hero raised among the gods, or, better (for
of this thought the Aryans too had their dim foreshadowing), he is an
Avatar, an Incarnation of the Godhead, come down to take upon him for a
while the painful life of men. This was the way the sun-gods were
regarded by the Indo-European nations. Accordingly, while their deepest
religious feelings belonged to the abstract god Zeus, Jupiter among the
Greeks and Romans, Dyâus and later on Brahma (a pure abstraction) among
the Indians, the stories of their mythology belonged to a more human
divinity, who in most cases is the sun-god. He is the Indra[57] of the
Hindus, who wrestles with the black serpent, the Night, as Horus did
with Typhon; he is the Apollo of the Greeks, likewise the slayer of the
serpent, the Pythôn; or else he is Heracles (Hercules), the
god-man--sometimes worshipped as a god, sometimes as a demi-god
only--the great and mighty hero, the performer of innumerable labours
for his fellows; or he is Thor, the Hercules of the Norsemen, the enemy
of the giants and of the great earth-serpent, which represent the dark
chaotic forces of nature; or Frey, the bearer of the sword, or the mild
Balder, the fairest of all the gods, the best-beloved by gods and men.
It is clear that a different character of worship will belong to each
order of divinity. The sacred grove or the wild mountain-summit would be
naturally dedicated to the mysterious pervading presence; the temple
would be the natural home of the human-featured god; and this all the
more because men worshipped in forest glade or upon mountain-top before
they dedicated to their gods houses made with hands. Dyâus is the old,
the primevally old, divinity, the ‘son of time’ as the Greeks called
him.[58] Whenever, therefore, we trace the meeting streams of thought,
the _cult_ of the sun-god and the _cult_ of the sky, to the latter
belongs the conservative part of the national creed, his rival is the
reforming element. In the Vedic religion of India, Indra, as has been
said, has vanquished the older deity; we feel in the Vedas that Dyâus,
or even another sky-god, Varuna, though often mentioned, no longer
occupy a commanding place. Not, however, without concessions on both
sides. Indra could not have achieved this victory but that he partakes
of both natures. He is the sky as well as the sun, more human than the
unmoved _watching_ heavens, he is a worker for man, the sender of the
rain and the sunshine, the tamer of the stormwinds, and the enemy of
darkness.
And if any one should examine in detail the different systems of the
Aryan people, he would, I think, have no difficulty in tracing
throughout them the two influences which have been dwelt upon, and in
each connecting these two influences with their sky-and sun-gods.
Whatever theory may be used to account for it, the change of thought is
noticeable. Man seems to awake into the world with the orison of
Belarius upon his lips; he is content with the silent unchanging
abstract god. But as he advances in the burden and heat of the day he
wishes for a fellow-worker, or at least for some potency which watches
his daily struggles with less of godlike sublime indifference. Hence
arise his sun-gods--the gods who toil and suffer, and even succumb and
die.
[Sidenote: The earth-goddess.]
The sky-and the sun-gods, then, were, I think, the two chief male
divinities among the Aryan folk taken as a whole. There corresponded to
them in most Aryan creeds two female divinities, an older and a younger,
a wife and a maiden, such as were on the one side among the Greeks Hera
and Demeter, and on the other side Athene and Artemis,[59] or
Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. In the Norse creed, again, there is
Frigg, the wife of Odin, and Freyja, the sister of Frey. This last is
indeed not a maiden in the Eddic mythology. But the husband of Freyja is
a person of such very small importance that we may feel sure he is only
a sort of _addendum_ to her nature and surroundings, and that she is in
character very much the counterpart of her brother, a maiden-goddess--goddess
of spring-time and of love.
In respect to the elder, the married goddess, we may say, almost with
certainty, that she is the earth--the natural wife of the heavens, and
naturally thought of as the mother of all mankind--_Terra Mater_. We
know that the ancient Germans worshipped a goddess whom Tacitus calls
Nerthus (possibly a mistake for _Hertha_, Earth), and, he adds,
_Nerthus id est Terra Mater_. And in the Scandinavian offshoot of the
ancient German creed there can be no doubt that the same idea of Mother
Earth is embodied in the goddess Frigg, the wife of Odin.
The Romans had their native goddess Tellus, who was only obscured in
later times by such Greek or half-Greek divinities as Demeter or Cybele.
For this Demeter of the Greeks bears a name which most philologists are
agreed had a signification precisely the same as _Terra
Mater_--Gê-mêtêr. Demeter is but one of many wives of Zeus mentioned in
the Theogony of Hesiod. All of these wives, including Hera (Juno), the
highest in rank of them all, were probably at one time or another
personifications of the earth.
The Vedas, too, have their mother-goddess, their Mother Earth. This is
Prithvi, or Prithivi, the wide-stretching, generally called
Prithivi-mátar, which is also Earth-Mother. And some think this word
‘Prithvi’ is connected with that of the Northern Frigg.[60] And the
Vedas have their young maiden-goddess, who in the Vedas is called Ushas
the Dawn.
[Sidenote: Goddesses of Spring and Dawn.]
What is the nature-significance of this maiden-goddess? It is less easy
to determine than in the case of the other three divinities. One form of
the maiden-goddess is the divinity of the seed, like Persephone, that is
to say, a goddess of all vegetation, and hence of the spring. In the
Vedas, again, Ushas is a goddess of the dawn, an idea nearly allied to
that of Spring; and some people think that this is also the foundation
of Athenê’s nature. There are other characteristics of the
maiden-goddess which look as if she were an embodiment of the clouds;
but then the clouds are so nearly connected with the dawn that such an
idea can scarcely be said to contradict the other notion. The
maiden-goddess is in many cases born of the sea. Not only is Aphroditê,
or Venus, born of the sea, but Athenê is so likewise; at any rate one of
her names, Tritogeneia, implies this origin. The more common story of
Athenê’s birth, that she sprang from the head of her father, Zeus--this,
too, when we remember that Zeus is the sky, is not inconsistent with her
being the cloud.
When all is said, it must be owned that the nature-origin of this
maiden-goddess is not so obvious as in the case of the divinities of the
sky, sun, or earth. That only means that, as a nature-goddess, she is
not so necessary to the creed, but that on the other hand many objects
of nature--the dawn, the clouds, streams, the wind, sunshine--have
suggested the thought of this divinity, and that the suggestion found a
natural echo in the heart of mankind.
There are, of course, behind the greater nature-gods a number of other
natural forces--the sea, the wind, lightning, fire, streams, fountains,
the dawn, the clouds. These all receive their place in the Aryan
pantheon. But the characters of the lesser gods tend to echo those of
the greater. Sometimes two different but nearly allied objects of nature
are rolled into one to form a new god.
Thus the god of storms and thunder is often associated with the sky, as
are Zeus and Jupiter among the Greeks and Romans. Dyâus, the most
primitive form of sky-god, is the clear heaven. The name is connected
with a root _div_, to shine. But Zeus and Jupiter are the cloudy or
thundery skies. The Vedic Indra is often not unlike them. That is to
say, the sky-god, in their persons, has taken upon him the nature of the
god of storms. But despite these changes, we may still go back to the
gods of earth, and sky, and sun, and cloud as forming the backbone of
the Aryan creed taken as a whole.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Vedic religion of India.]
From this primitive stock different religious systems developed
themselves just as different nationalities sprang from the original
Aryan race. We can only form an adequate idea of what these religious
systems were like by studying them in the books of religion, of poetry,
and mythology which the various peoples have left behind them. And as a
matter of fact, we have really only three or four literatures of ancient
religion and mythology among the different branches of the Aryan people
from which much information can be gained. These are the Vedas for the
ancient Indians, Greek literature for the religion of the Greeks, and
the Old Norse poetry--what we may call the Eddaic literature--for the
religion of the Scandinavians. The Romans, before their literature
began, had almost exchanged their early creed for that of the Greeks;
the other German races (not Scandinavian) and the Slavs left no record
of their beliefs before they were converted to Christianity. Of the Zend
Avesta, the religious book of the Persians, we will speak hereafter.
[Sidenote: Indra.]
Naturally enough, each separate creed has developed many peculiar
features. In the religion of India, Indra, who had been the younger and
more active divinity--whether a sun-god or no we cannot be quite
sure--had, before the Vedas came to be written, almost completely ousted
Dyâus from the supreme position which he once occupied. The worship of
Indra is the central point of Vedic religion; and in many hymns of the
Vedas Indra has taken the character of a god of storms; almost as much
so as Zeus and Jupiter. It was the power of the god which was
especially worshipped. He was no doubt the god of battles _par
excellence_ to the ancient Indian. The Vedic hymnist calls upon him, as
the Psalmist calls upon Jehovah, to show his might and confound those
who dared to doubt his supremacy. For here in India, as in Palestine,
‘the wicked saith in his heart There is no God.’
HYMN TO INDRA.
_Indra speaks._
‘I come with might before thee, stepping first,
And behind me move all the heavenly powers.
_The Poet speaks._
‘If thou, O Indra, wilt my lot bestow,
A hero’s part dost thou perform for me.
‘To thee the holy drink I offer first;
Thy portion here is laid, thy _soma_[61] brewed.
Be, while I righteous am, to me a friend;
So shall we slay of foemen many a one.
‘Ye who desire blessings bring your hymn
To Indra, for the true is always true.
“There is no Indra,” many say. “Who ever
Hath seen him? Why should we his praise proclaim?”
_Indra speaks._
‘I am here, singer; look on me, here stand I.
In might all other beings I surpass.
Thy holy service still my strength renews,
And thereby smiting, all things I smite down.
‘And as on heaven’s height I sat alone,
To me thy offering and thy prayer rose up.
Then spake my soul this word unto herself:
“My votaries and their children call upon me.”’
The _character_ of Indra, then, is, as we find it in the Vedas, more
like that of a supreme Zeus than of any other divinity of the parallel
Aryan religious systems. But his _deeds_, the mythology connected with
his name, remind us of the deeds of Apollo. For he is the great
serpent-or dragon-slayer, like the Greek Apollo and the Northern Thor.
Heracles, too, as we remember, is a serpent-slayer. The ‘enemy’ whom
Indra is most constantly implored to strike are two serpents, Ahi and
Vritra. These are serpents of darkness, but they are also the concealers
of the water, and this water Indra sets free. ‘Him (the serpent) the god
struck with Indra-might, and set free the all-gleaming water for the use
of man.’ Therefore these serpents must also typify the clouds.
In going forth to fight, Indra is accompanied by a band of supernatural
heroes, who have no exact counterpart in any of the other Aryan
mythologies, and who are certainly beings, children we might say, of the
storm. Their name is the Maruts. And some of the many hymns dedicated to
them have a fine martial ring, like the tramp of armed men--
HYMN TO THE MARUTS.
‘Where is the fair assemblage of heroes,
The men of Rudra,[62] with their bright horses?
For of their birth knoweth no man the story,
Only themselves, their wondrous descent.
‘The light they flash upon one another;
The eagles fought, the winds were raging;
But this secret knoweth the wise man,
Once that Prishna[63] her udder gave them.
‘Our race of heroes, through the Maruts be it
Ever victorious in reaping of men.
On their way they hasten, in brightness the brightest,
Equal in beauty, unequalled in might.’
[Sidenote: Agni.]
The god who is most peculiar to the Vedic pantheon is Agni, the
Fire-god. The word _Agni_ is allied to the Latin _ignis_. No doubt Agni
has his representatives in the creeds of other Aryan peoples, in the
Hephæstus of the Greeks, or in the Vulcan of the Romans; probably in the
Loki of the Scandinavians. But these are all quite secondary beings:
Loki cannot be called a god at all. Agni, on the other hand, is one of
the very greatest of the Vedic deities. Only Indra has more hymns
dedicated to him than Agni. This shows how great was the reverence which
fire commanded among the Indians, and it is consistent with much that
has been said in an earlier chapter of the importance which primitive
people always attach, and which the native Indians to this day still
attach, to the sacred house-fire in their midst. It reminds us too of
the fire-worship of the Persians.[64]
Agni, however, is not only the house-fire. He has a double birth--one on
earth, one in the clouds. He descends as the lightning descends from
heaven. But, at the same time, he is born of the rubbing of two sticks,
and in the flame of the sacrifice he is imagined to ascend again to
heaven bringing with him the prayers of the worshipper. How well,
therefore, Agni was adapted to take the place of the younger god, the
friend of man, when Indra, once probably a sun-god, had (so to say)
removed himself from familiar approach by taking his throne high in
heaven!
HYMN TO AGNI.
‘Agni is messenger of all the world.
* * * * *
Skyward ascends his flame the merciful,
With our libations watered well;
And now the red smoke seeks the heavenly way,
And men enkindle Agni here.
‘We make of thee our Herald, Holy One;
Bring down the gods unto our feast.
O son of night, and all who nourish man,
Pardon us when on you we call.
‘Thou, Agni, art the ruler of the house;
Thou at the altar art our priest.
O purifier, wise and rich in good,
O sacrificer, bring us safely now.’
There are other genuine sun-gods in the Vedic creed, to whom hymns are
addressed. One of these is Mitra.[65] Mitra too is a friend of man--
To man comes Mitra down in friendly converse.
Mitra it was who fixed the earth and heaven.
Unslumbering mankind he watches over.
To Mitra then your full libations pour.’
But there are not many hymns addressed to Mitra alone. And he stands far
behind Indra or Agni in the Vedic creed as we actually find it. Another
sun-god--the disk of the sun, so to say--is Surya, the shiner. He is
sometimes called the eye of Mitra and Varuna. But in other places he is
said to come through heaven dragging his wheel. Yet great as he is, the
sun-god is compelled to follow his daily round. ‘He travels upon
changeless paths.’ Another sun-god is Savitar, whose name is almost
identical in meaning with Surya.
[Sidenote: Dawn and Evening.]
The writers of the Vedic hymns were very largely taken up with observing
and recording in their mythic fashion all the skyey phenomena from dawn
to sunset. For each changed aspect of the heavens, bright or cloudy,
calm or windy, they had a divinity. They sang to the fair young morning
as she came out of the chambers of darkness and opened the stalls for
the cattle to go forth to pasture; they sang the heavy labouring sun of
midday; they sang the stormy sky or the hurrying clouds; and at evening
they sang the evening sun sinking peacefully to rest and bringing ‘night
and peace’ to all the world. Wherefore, to bring to a close this picture
of the religion of the Vedas, we will give just two more hymns from that
vast collection, the Rig-Veda--a hymn to the morning, and a hymn to the
sun (Savitar) at sun-setting.
HYMN TO THE DAWN.
‘Dawn full of wisdom, rich in everything!
Fairest! attend the singers’ song of praise.
O thou rich goddess, old, yet ever young!
Thou, all-dispenser, in due order comest.
‘Shine forth, O goddess, thine eternal morning,
With thy bright cars our song of praise awakening.
Thee draw through heaven the well-yoked team of horses--
The horses golden-bright, that shine afar.
‘Enlightener of all being, breath of morning,
Thou holdest up aloft the light of gods.
Unto one goal ever thy course pursuing,
Oh, roll towards us now thy wheel again!
‘Opening at once her girdle, she appears,
The lovely Dawn, the ruler of the stalls.
She, light-producing, wonder-working, noble,
Up-mounted from the coast of earth and heaven.
‘Up, up, and bring to meet the Dawn, the goddess
Bright beaming now, your humble song of praise.
To heaven climbed up her ray the sweet due bearing,
Joying to shine the airy space she filled.
‘With beams of heaven the Pure One was awakened,
The Rich One’s ray mounted through both the worlds.
To Ushas[66] goest thou, Agni, with a prayer
For goodly wealth, when she bright-shining comes.’
HYMN TO THE EVENING SUN.
‘Savitar the god arose, in power arose,
His quick deeds and his journey to renew.
He ‘tis who to all gods dispenses treasure,
And blesses those that call him to the feast.
‘The god stands up and stretches forth his arm,
Raises his hand and all obedient wait;
For all the waters to his will incline,
And the winds even on his path are stilled.
‘Now he unyokes the horses that have borne him,
The wanderer from his travel now he frees,
The serpent-slayer’s fury now is stayed;
At Savitar’s command come night and peace.
And now rolls up the spinning wife her web,
The artificer now his cunning labour leaves,
* * * * *
And to the household folk beneath the roof,
The household fire imparts their share of light.
* * * * *
‘He who to work went forth is now returned,
The longing of all wand’rers turns toward home;
Leaving his toil, goes each man to his house:
The universal mover orders so.
‘In the water settest thou the water’s heir,[67]
On the firm earth badst the wild beast to roam;
The bird[68] makes for his nest, cattle for their stall,
To their own home all beasts the sun-god sends.’
[Sidenote: Greek religion.]
In Greece it would seem that the chief religious influences came from
Zeus (Jupiter[69]) and Apollo, and belonged, as appears, to two separate
branches of the same race who came together to form the Hellenic people.
The ancestors of the Greeks had, we know, travelled from the Aryan home
by a road which took them south of the Black Sea, and on to the
table-land of Asia Minor. So far a comparison of names and traditions
shows them advancing in a compact body. Here they separated; and, after
a stay of some centuries, during which a part had time to mingle with
the Semitic people of the land, they pushed forward, some across the
Hellespont and round that way by land through Thrace and Thessaly,
spreading as they went down to the extremity of the peninsula; others to
the western coast of Asia Minor, and then, when through the lapse of
years they had learnt their art from the Phœnician navigators who
frequented all that land, onward from island to island, as over
stepping-stones, across the Ægean.
[Sidenote: Zeus.]
The Pelasgic Zeus, however, is not quite the same being as is the Zeus
whom we are to fancy as the supreme god of the Hellenic race. This last,
we know, is called the Olympic Zeus. The Pelasgic god is a being who
loves solitary mountain heights or dark groves of trees. In this aspect
of his character he is very like the chief divinity of the Northmen,
Odin. And there can be no doubt that in his nature he is a god of
storms and wind. He is not the clear sky, as is the Vedic Dyâus (from
the root _div_, shining), and as had once been the supreme god of the
Aryan race. From that condition to the condition of a god of storms,
Zeus had already passed before we catch any sight of him under this name
Zeus--in other words, before we catch any sight of _him_ at all.
These Pelasgi were before all things the worshippers of pure nature.
Theirs were all those primitive elements in the Greek religion which
were caught up into the more developed creed, and, though they were
softened in the process of amalgamation with it, still showed above its
surface as masses of rock show upon a hillside, albeit they are covered
over by a thin covering of green. Those strange half-human beings like
Pan, the Arcadian god, like the Thessalian centaurs,--these belong to
the primitive creed of the Greeks. So long as they were confounded with
the phenomena of nature in which they took their rise, they were, in
every sense, natural enough. But when art took possession of them, and
tried to body them forth in visible shapes, they became monsters,
unformed, neither man nor beast.
The fact that the greatest shrines of Zeus were at Dodona in Epirus, and
in Elis, both states on the _western_ coast of Greece, would almost of
itself show that the worship of Zeus belonged more especially to the
first comers of the Greek race, who got pushed further westward as the
more enlightened people came in from the east; and while _these_ were
worshipping their gods in temples, the Pelasgic Greeks still worshipped
their Zeus in sacred groves like those of Dodona and of Elis.
The god, on the other hand, who is more especially the god of the newer
Greek people, the Dorians and the Ionians,
[Sidenote: Apollo.]
those who reformed the Greek race, and through whom the Pelasgic people
grew into the Hellenes, this god is Apollo.
Apollo is, we have said, in origin a sun-god. We see some traces of his
nature even in the statues which represent him, as in the abundant hair
which streams from his head, the picture of the sun’s rays.[70] But, of
course, long before historic days he had become much more than a mere
god of nature to his worshippers. He had become what we know him, the
ideal of youthful manhood as the Greeks admired it most, the ideal of
suppleness and strength, the ideal, too, of what we call ‘culture,’ of
poetry and music, and all that adds a grace to life.
Apollo’s chief shrines were rather on the eastern than on the western
side of Greece--at Delphi, for example, in Phocis. (Is it not
characteristic to find in this wise the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, the
oracle of Zeus at Dodona?) But Delphi is the most westerly of Apollo’s
favourite homes. Another, we know, was on the island of Delos, midway in
the Ægean, that island which the Greeks fancied the _umbilicus
orbis_--the navel of the world. Delphi and Delos are the shrines of
Apollo belonging to one out of the two great nationalities of the new
blood who reformed the nation of the Greeks. Delphi and Delos belong to
the Dorians. But among the Ionians of Asia Minor, who were the other
great reforming element in Greek life, Apollo had likewise many holy
places. And we know how, in the Iliad, he is represented as the champion
of the easterns, the Asiatic Greeks, against the westerns, the Greeks
of Greece proper. ‘Hear me,’ prays Glaucus, in the Iliad--‘hear me, O
king, who art somewhere in the rich realm of Lycea or of Troy; for
everywhere canst thou hear a man in sorrow, such as my sorrow is.’
Not but that these worshippers of Apollo were likewise worshippers of
Zeus. It was from the Dorians, whose ancient home was in Thessaly, in
the vale of Tempe, and under the shadow of Olympus, that sprang the
worship of the Olympian Zeus. This Olympian Zeus was the same as the
ancient god of the Pelasgians--the Pelasgian Zeus--the same, and yet
different, for he was the ancient storm-god, softened and made more
human by his contact with Apollo. In time this Olympian Zeus superseded
the Pelasgic god even in his own favourite seats, and we have the
phenomenon of the festival in his honour--the greatest festival of
Greece--the Olympia, being held in the plains of Elis, near the ancient
grove of the Pelasgian Zeus.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Hermes.]
As before by a comparison of words, so now in mythology by a comparison
of legends, we form our notion of the remoteness of the time at which
these stories first passed current. Not only, for instance, do we see
that Indra and Apollo resembled each other in character, but we have
proof that nature-myths--stories really narrating some process of
nature--were familiar alike to Greeks and Indians. The Vedas, the sacred
books from which we gather our knowledge of ancient Hindu religion, do
not relate their stories of the gods in the same way, or with the same
clearness and elaboration, that the Greek poets do. They are collections
of hymns, prayers in verse, addressed to the gods themselves, and what
they relate is told more by reference and implication than directly.
But even with this difference, we have no difficulty in signalizing some
of the adventures of Indra as almost identical with those of the son of
Lêtô. Let one suffice. The pastoral life of the Aryans is reflected in
their mythology, and thus it is that in the Vedas almost all the varied
phenomena of nature are in their turn compared to cattle. Indra is often
spoken of as a bull; still more commonly are the clouds the cows of
Indra, and their milk the rain. More than one of the songs of the
Rig-Veda allude to a time when the wicked Pa_n_is (beings of fog or
mist[71]) stole the cows from the fields of Indra and hid them away in a
cave. They obscured their footprints by tying up their feet or by making
them drag brushwood behind them. Then Indra sent his dog Sarama (the
dawn or breath of dawn), and she found out where the cattle were hidden.
But (according to one story) the Pa_n_is overcame her honesty and gave
her a cup of milk to drink, so that she came back to Indra and denied
having seen the cows. But Indra discovered the deception, and came with
his strong spear and conquered the Pa_n_is, and recovered what had been
stolen.
Now turn to the Greek myth. The story here is cast in a different key.
‘Te boves olim nisi reddidisses
Per dolum amotas, puerum minaci
Voce dum terret, viduus pharetra
Risit Apollo.’
Hermes (Mercury) is here the thief. He steals the cattle of Apollo
feeding upon the Pierian mountain, and conceals his theft much as the
Pa_n_is had done. Apollo discovers what has been done, and complains to
Zeus. But Hermes is a god, and no punishment befalls him like that which
was allotted to the Pa_n_is; he charms Apollo by the sound of his lyre,
and is forgiven, and allowed to retain his booty. Still, all the
essentials of the story are here; and the story in either case relates
the same nature-myth. The clouds which in the Indian tale are stolen by
the damp vapours of morning, are in the Greek legend filched away by the
morning breeze; for this is the nature of Hermes. And that some such
power as the wind had been known to the Indians as accomplice in the
work, is shown by the complicity of Sarama in one version of the tale.
For Sarama likewise means the morning breeze; and, in fact, _Sarama_ and
_Hermes_ are derived from the same root, and are almost identical in
character. Both mean in their general nature the wind; in their special
appearances they stand now for the morning, now for the evening breeze,
or even for the morning and evening themselves.
[Sidenote: Heracles.]
The next most important deity as regards the whole Greek race is
Heracles (Hercules). It is a great mistake to regard him, as our
mythology-books often lead us to do, as a demi-god or hero only.
Originally, and among a portion of the Greek race, he was one of the
mightiest gods; but at last, perhaps because his adventures became in
later tradition rather preposterous and undignified, he sank to be a
demi-god, or immortalized man. The story of Heracles’ life and labours
is a pure but most elaborate sun-myth. From his birth, where he
strangles the serpents in his cradle--the serpents of darkness, like the
Pythôn which Apollo slew--through his _Herculean_ labours to his death,
we watch the labours of the sun through the mists and clouds of heaven
to its ruddy setting; and these stories are so like to others which are
told of the Northern Heracles, Thor, that we cannot refuse to believe
that they were known in the main in days before there were either
Greek-speaking Greeks or Teutons. The closing scene of Heracles’ life
speaks the most eloquently of his nature-origin. Returning home in
victory--his last victory--to Trachis, Deianira sends to him there the
fatal white robe steeped in the blood of Nessus. No sooner has he put it
on than his death-agony begins. In the madness of his pain he dashes his
companion, Lichas, against the rocks; he tears at the burning robe, and
with it brings away the flesh from his limbs. Then, seeing that all is
over, he becomes more calm. He gives his last commands to his son,
Hyllus, and orders his funeral pile to be prepared upon mount Œta, as
the sun, after its last fatal battle with the clouds of sunset, sinks
down calmly into the sea. Then as, after it has gone, the sky lights up
aglow with colour, so does the funeral pyre of Heracles send out its
light over the Ægean, from its _western_ shore.
[Sidenote: Ares.]
I believe Ares to have been once likewise a sun-god. The special home of
his worship was warlike Macedon and Thrace. There can be no question,
however, that in pre-historic times his worship was much more widely
extended than we should suppose from reading Homer or the poets
subsequent to Homer. Traces of his worship are to be found in the Zeus
Areios at Elis, and in the Athenian Areopagus. But his natural home was
in the North. He was the national divinity of the Thracians. And I have
no doubt, as I have said, that he was once the sun-god of these Northern
people, and only in later times became an abstraction, a god of war and
valour.
[Sidenote: Dêmêtêr.]
Another deity who was distinctly of Aryan origin was Dêmêtêr (Ceres), a
name which is, as we have said, probably, none other than Gêmêtêr,
‘mother earth.’ She is the Greek equivalent of the Prithvi of the Vedas.
But whereas Prithvi has sunk into obscurity, Dêmêtêr was associated
with some of the most important rites of Greek religion. The association
of ideas which, face to face with the masculine godhead, the sun or sky,
placed the fruitful all-nourishing earth, is so natural as to find a
place in almost every system. We have seen how the two formed a part of
the Egyptian and Chaldæan mythologies. And we have seen that each branch
of the Aryan folk carried away along with their sky-and sun-worship this
earth-worship also. But among none of the different branches was the
great nature-myth which always gathers round the earth-goddess, woven
into a more pathetic story than by the Greeks. The story is that of the
winter death or sleep of earth, or of all that makes earth beautiful and
glad. And it was thus the Greeks told that world-old legend. Persephone
(Proserpina), or Corê, is the green earth, or the green verdure which
may be thought the daughter of earth and sky. She is, indeed, almost the
reduplication of Dêmêtêr herself; and in art it is not always easy to
distinguish a representation as of one or of the other. At spring-time
Persephone, a maiden, with her maidens, is wandering careless in the
Nysian plain, plucking the flowers of spring, ‘crocuses and roses and
fair violets,’[72] when in a moment all is changed. Hades, regent of
Hell, rises in his black-horsed golden chariot; unheeding her cries, he
carries her off to share his infernal throne and rule in the kingdoms of
the dead. In other words, the awful shadow of death falls across the
path of youth and spring, and Hades appears to proclaim the fateful
truth that all spring-time, all youth and verdure, are alike with hoary
age candidates for service in his Shadowy Kingdom. The sudden contrast
between spring flowers and maidenhood and death gives a dramatic
intensity to the scene and represents the quiet course of decay in one
tremendous moment.[73] To lengthen out the picture and show the slow
sorrow of earth robbed of its spring and summer, Dêmêtêr is portrayed
wandering from land to land in bootless search of her lost daughter. We
know how deep a significance this story had in the religious thought of
Greece; how the representation of it composed the chief feature of the
Eleusinian mysteries, and how these and other mysteries probably
enshrined the intenser, more hidden feelings of religion, and continued
to do so when mythology had lost its hold upon the popular mind. It is,
indeed, a new-antique story, patent to all and fraught for all with
solemnest meaning. So that this myth of the death of Proserpine has
lived on in a thousand forms through all the Aryan systems.
[Sidenote: Athenê and other goddesses.]
Persephone is one of the most characteristic of the maiden-goddesses of
whom we spoke above. The most literal and material interpretation of her
myth would show her to be an embodiment of the grain, which sinks into
the ground when it is sown and springs up again to live above the earth
for half the year. But in a wider sense I have no doubt that Persephone
is meant to typify the spring of which the grain might well be a sort of
symbol, or to typify vegetation generally. And this is one of the
natural characters belonging to the maiden-goddess. She is very
frequently a goddess of spring in some aspect or other--of spring as the
season of beauty and love. Such is the Freyja of the Norse mythology;
such, to some extent, are Aphroditê (Venus) and Artemis (Diana).[74]
There is, however, one divinity among the Greeks who seems to have a
somewhat different character, and who is so much more important a
maiden-goddess than any of these that she at once springs into our
thoughts when we are speaking of divinities of this class. I mean, of
course, Athenê (Minerva). But in the first place, the wide worship of
Athenê is partly accidental and due to her being the patroness of
Athens; in the second place, Athenê has taken so many ethical
characteristics, she is so advanced a conception of a divine being, that
she is not at all a good representative of a religion in its early
state. It would be rather confusing than otherwise to have to trace the
character of Athenê step by step out of the natural phenomenon from
which she sprang. I will only say here that I believe her to have been
originally born from the sea or from a river. She may once have actually
been a goddess of water. Afterwards she became, I think, the goddess of
the rivers of heaven or the clouds. And as the clouds hold the storm and
the lightning, Athenê is sometimes a storm-goddess, sometimes a goddess
of the lightning.[75] Or again, she may be the heaven which bears the
storm-cloud, the thundering heaven. We remember that Zeus and Athenê
each have the privilege of wearing the Ægis--the dreadful fringed Ægis,
which is, I think, the lightning-bearing cloud.
Artemis (Diana) is the moon-goddess, at least she is so in her character
as sister of Apollo. But there were really many different Artemises in
Greece. And very often she is a river-goddess. In the same way, there
were many different Aphroditês. The more sensuous the character in which
Aphroditê (Venus) appears, the more does she show her Asiatic birth; and
this was why the Greeks, when regarding her especially as the goddess of
love, called her Cypris, or Cytheræa, after Cyprus and Cythera, which
had been in ancient days stations for the Phœnician traders, and
where they had first made acquaintance with the Greeks. Aphroditê was
the favourite goddess of these mariners, as, indeed, a moon-goddess well
might be; and it was they who gave her her most corrupt and licentious
aspect. For she has not always this character even among the
Phœnicians; but oftentimes appears as a huntress, more like Artemis,
or armed as a goddess of battle, like Athenê. Doubtless, however,
goddesses closely allied to Aphroditê or Artemis, divinities of
productive nature and divinities of the moon, belonged to the other
branches of the Indo-European family. The _idea_ of these divinities was
a common property; the exact being in whom these ideas found expression
varied with each race.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Scandinavian religion.]
If we travel from India and from Hellas to the cold North, the same
characteristic features reappear. In the Teutonic religions, _as we know
them_,[76] Odin has taken the place of the old Aryan sky-god, Dyâus. The
last did, indeed, linger on in the Zio or Tyr of these systems; but he
had sunk from the position of a chief divinity. The change, however, is
not great. The god chosen to fill his place resembles him as nearly as
possible in character. Odin, or Wuotan,[77] whose name in its
etymological meaning is probably the god who moves violently or rushes
along,[78] was originally a god of the wind rather than of the
atmosphere of heaven. Yet along with this more confined part of his
character, he bears almost all the attributes of the exalted sky-god,
the Dyâus or Zeus; only he adds to these some parts peculiar to a god of
wind; and we can easily understand how, as these Aryan people journeyed
northwards, their wind-god grew in magnitude and power.
[Sidenote: Odin.]
It was Odin who lashed into fury their stormy seas, and kept the
impatient _vikings_ (fjord-men) forced prisoners in their sheltered
bays. He it was who rushed through their mountain forests, making the
ancient pine-tops bend to him as he hurried on; and men sitting at home
over their winter fires, and listening to his howl, told one another how
he was hastening to some distant battle-field, there to direct the
issue, and to choose from among the fallen such heroes as were worthy to
accompany him to Valhalla, the Hall of Bliss.[79] Long after the worship
of Christ had overturned that of the Æsir,[80] this, the most familiar
and popular aspect of Odin’s nature, lived on in the thoughts of men. In
the Middle Ages the wind reappears in the legend of the Phantom Army, a
strange apparition of two hosts of men seen to join battle in midair.
The peasant of the Jura or the Alps could tell how, when alone upon the
mountain-side, he had beheld the awful vision. Sometimes all the details
of the fight were visible, but as though the combatants were riding in
the air; sometimes the _sounds_ of battle only came from the empty space
above, till at the end a shower of blood gave the fearful witness a
proof that he was not the dupe of his imagination only.[81] In other
places, especially, for example, in the Harz mountains, the Phantom
Army gave place to the Wild Huntsman. This phantom hunt has many
different names in the different countries of Europe. With us it is
known best under the name of Herne the Hunter or of Arthur’s Chase. In
Brittany this last name is also used. In the Harz and in other places in
Germany the huntsman was called Hackelbärend or Hackelberg; and the
story went how he had been chief huntsman to the Duke of Brunswick, but
for impiety or for some dreadful oath, like that which had brought
vengeance on the famous Van der Decken, had been condemned to hunt for
ever through the clouds--for ever, that is, until the Day of
Judgment.[82] All the year through he pursues his way alone, and the
peasants hear his holloa, mingled with the baying of his two dogs.[83]
But for twelve nights--between Christmas and the Twelfth-night--he hunts
on the earth; and if any door is left open during the night, and one of
the two hounds runs in, he will bring misfortune upon that house.
Besides this wilder aspect of his character, Odin appears as the
heaven-god--all-embracing--the father of gods and men, like Zeus.
‘All-father Odin’ he is called, and his seat was on Air-throne; thither
every day he ascended and looked over Glad-home, the home of the gods,
and over the homes of men, and far out beyond the great earth-girding
sea, to the dim frost-bound giant-land on earth’s border. And whatever
he saw of wrong-doing and of wickedness upon the earth, that he set to
rights; and he kept watch against the coming of the giants over seas to
invade the abode of man and the citadel of the gods. Only these
last--the race of giants--he could not utterly subdue and exterminate;
for Fate, which was stronger than all, had decreed that they should
remain until the end, and only be overthrown at the Twilight of the Gods
themselves. But of this myth, which was half-Christian, we have not
space to speak at length here.
In this picture of Odin we surely see a fellow-portrait to that of the
‘wide-seeing’ Zeus. ‘The eye of Zeus, which sees all things and knows
all,’ says one poet; or again, as another says, ‘Zeus is the earth,
Zeus is the sky, Zeus is all, and that which is over all.’
[Sidenote: Tyr, Thor, and Balder.]
Behind Odin stands Tyr--of whom we have already spoken--and Thor and
Balder, who are, or originally were, two different embodiments of the
sun; Thor being also a god of thunder. He is in character very closely
allied to Heracles. He is the mighty champion, the strongest and most
warlike of all the gods. But he is the friend of man and patron of
agriculture,[84] and as such the enemy of the giant-race, which
represents not only cold and darkness, but the barren, rugged,
uncultivated regions of earth. Like Heracles, Thor is never idle,
constantly with some work on hand, ‘faring eastward to fight Trolls
(giants),’ as the Eddas often tell us. In one of these expeditions he
performs three labours, which may be paralleled from the labours of
Heracles. He nearly drains the sea dry by drinking from a horn; this is
the sun ‘sucking up the clouds’ from the sea, as people still speak of
him as doing. It corresponds to the turning the course of the Alpheus
and Peneus, which Heracles performs. Then he tries to lift (as he
thinks) a large cat from the ground, but in reality he has been lifting
the great mid-earth serpent (notice the fact that we have the sun at war
with a serpent once more) which encircles the whole earth, and he has by
his strength shaken the very foundations of the world. This is the same
as the feat of Heracles in bringing up Cerberus from the underworld. And
lastly, he wrestles, as he thinks, with an old woman, and is worsted;
but in reality he has been wrestling with Old Age or Death, from whom no
one ever came off the victor. So we read in Homer that Heracles once
wounded Hades himself, and ‘brought grief into the land of shades,’ and
in Euripides’ beautiful play, _Alcestis_, we see Heracles struggling,
but this time victoriously, with Thanatos, Death himself. In these
labours the Norse hero, though striving manfully, fails; but the Greek
is always victorious. Herein lies a difference belonging to the
character of the two creeds.
Balder the Beautiful--the fair, mild Balder--represents the sun more
truly than Thor does: the sun in his gentle aspect, as he would
naturally appear to a Norseman. His house is Breidablik, ‘Wide-glance,’
that is to say, the bright upper air, the sun’s home. He is like the son
of Lêtô seen in his benignant aspect, the best beloved among gods, the
brightener of their warlike life, beloved, too, by all things on earth,
living and inanimate, and lamented as only the sun could be--the chief
nourisher at life’s feast. For, when Balder died, everything in heaven
and earth, ‘both all living things and trees and stones and all metals,’
wept to bring him back again, ‘as thou hast no doubt seen these things
weep when they are brought from a cold place into a hot one.’ A modern
poet has very happily expressed the character of Balder, the sun-god,
the great quickener of life upon earth. Balder is supposed to leave
heaven to tread the ways of men, and his coming is the signal for the
new birth, as of spring-time, in the sleeping world.
‘There is some divine trouble
On earth and in air;
Trees tremble, brooks bubble,
Ants loosen the sod,
Warm footsteps awaken
Whatever is fair,
Sweet dewdrops are shaken
To quicken each clod.
The wild rainbows o’er him
Are melted and fade,
The light runs before him
Through meadow and glade.
Green branches close round him,
Their leaves whisper clear--
He is ours, we have found him,
Bright Baldur is here.’[85]
[Sidenote: Frigg, Freyja, Frey.]
The earth-mother of the Teutons was Frigg, the wife of Odin; but perhaps
when Frigg’s natural character was forgotten, Hertha (Earth) became
separated into another personage. ‘Odin and Frigg,’ says the Edda,
‘divide the slain;’ and this means that the sky-god received the breath,
the earth-goddess the body. But on the whole Frigg plays an
insignificant part in our late form of Teuton mythology. Closely related
to her, as Persephone is related to Dêmêtêr, with a name formed out of
hers, stands Freyja, the goddess of spring and beauty and love; for the
Northern goddess of love might better accord with the innocence of
spring than could the Phœnician Aphroditê. Freyja has a brother
Freyr, who reduplicates her name and character, for he too is a sun-god
or a god of spring.
Very beautiful is the myth which reverses the sad story of Persephone
(and of Balder), and tells of the barren earth wooed by the returning
spring. Freyr one day mounted the seat of Odin which was called
air-throne, and whence a god might look over all the ways of earth. And
looking out into giant-land far in the north, he saw a light flash forth
as the aurora lights up the wintry sky.[86] And looking again, he saw
that a maiden wondrously beautiful had just opened her father’s door,
and that this was her beauty which shone out over the snow. Then Freyr
left the air-throne and determined to send to the fair one and woo her
to be his wife. Her name was Gerda.[87] Freyr sent his messenger Skirnir
to carry his suit to Gerda; and Skirnir told her how great Freyr was
among the gods, how noble and happy a place was Asgard, the home of the
gods. For all Skirnir’s pleading Gerda would give no ear to his suit.
But Freyr had given his magic sword (the sun’s rays) to Skirnir; and at
last the ambassador, tired of pleading, drew that and threatened to take
the life of Gerda unless she granted Freyr his wish. So she consented to
meet him nine nights hence in the wood of Barri. The nine nights typify,
it is thought, the nine winter months of the Northern year; and the name
of the wood, Barri, means ‘the green;’ the beginnings of spring in the
wood being happily imaged as the meeting of the fresh and the barren
earth.
All the elements of nature were personified by the spirit of Aryan
poetry, and it would be a hopeless task--wearisome and useless to the
reader--to give a mere category of the nature-gods in each system. Those
which had most influence upon their religious thought were they who have
been mentioned, the gods of the sky and sun and mother-earth. The other
elemental divinities were (as a rule) more strictly bound within the
circle of their own dominions. It is curious to trace the difference
between these strictly polytheistic deities--coequal in their several
spheres--and those others who arose in obedience to a wider ideal of a
godhead. We have seen that the Indians had a strictly elemental heaven
or sky, as well as their god Dyâus, and that they called him Varu_n_a, a
word which corresponds etymologically to the Greek Ouranos, the heaven.
In the later Indian mythology Varu_n_a came to stand, not for the sky,
but for the wide expanse of ocean, and so corresponds to the Greek
Poseidon, the Latin Neptune, and the Norse Œgir. All these were the
gods of the sea and of all waters. The wind, as we saw, combined in the
person of Odin with the character of a highest god; but in the Greek the
part was played by an inferior divinity, Hermes. In India there is a
wind-god (called Vaja); but the character is likewise divided among a
plurality of minor divinities, the Ma_r_uts. Of Agni, the god of fire,
corresponding to Hephæstus and Vulcan, we have spoken; and in the North
Fire is not a god at all, but an evil being called Loki. This is enough
to show that the worship of Agni rose into fervour after the separation
of the Aryan folk.
We postpone to the next chapter the mention of the gods of the
under-world.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Zend religion.]
The religions of which we have been giving this slight sketch have been
what we may call ‘natural’ religions, that is to say, the thoughts about
God and the Unseen world which without help of any special _vision_ seem
to spring up simultaneously in the minds of the different Aryan peoples.
But one among the Aryan religions still in pre-historic times broke off
abruptly from its relation with the others, and, under a teacher whom we
may fairly call god-taught, in beauty and moral purity passed far beyond
the rest.
This was the Zoroastrian, the faith of the Iranian (ancient Persian)
branch, or, as it is perhaps better called, the Zend or Mazdean
religion; a creed which holds a pre-eminence among all the religions of
antiquity, excepting alone that of the Hebrews. And that there is no
exaggeration in such a claim is sufficiently witnessed by the inspired
writings themselves, in which the Persian kings are frequently spoken
of as if they as much as the Hebrews were worshippers of Jehovah.
‘Cyrus the servant of God,’ ‘The Lord said unto my lord (Cyrus),’ are
constantly recurring expressions in Isaiah.
In some respects this Zoroastrianism seems to stand in violent
opposition to the Aryan religion. Nevertheless, at the back of the
religion of the Zend Avesta, which is the sacred book of the Iranian
creed, we can (as was before hinted) trace the outline of an earlier
natural religion essentially the same--so far as we can judge--with the
religion of the Vedas. And upon the whole we should be disposed to say
that Zoroastrianism appears to be not much else than a higher
development of that earlier system. At any rate, we may feel sure that
the older system was before the coming of the ‘gold bright’[88]
reformer, essentially a polytheism with only some yearnings towards
monotheism, and that Zoroaster settled it upon a firmly monotheistic
basis. This very fact leaves us little to say about the Iranian system
considered strictly as a religion. For when once nations have risen to
the height of a monotheism there can be little essential difference in
their beliefs; such difference as there is will be in the conception
they have of the character of their gods, whether it be a high, a
relatively high, or relatively low one; and this again is more perhaps a
question of moral development than of religion. Their one god, since he
made all things and rules all things, cannot partake of the exclusive
nature of any natural phenomenon; he cannot be a god of wind or water,
of sun or sky. The Zoroastrian creed did afterwards introduce (then for
the first time in the world’s history) a very important element of
belief, namely, of the distinct origin, and almost if not quite equal
powers, of the good and evil principles. But this was later than the
time of Zarathustra.
The name which Zarathustra taught the people to give to the one god was
unconnected with Aryan nature-names, Dyâus, or Varu_n_a, or Indra. He
simply called him the ‘Great Spirit,’ or, in the Zend, Ahura-mazda;[89]
in later Persian, Hormuzd or Ormuzd. He is the all-perfect, all-wise,
all-powerful, all-beautiful. He is the creator of all things. And--still
nearer to the Christian belief--before the creation of the world, by
means whereof the world itself was made, existed the _Word_. Some trace
of this same doctrine of the pre-existing Word (_Hanover_, in the
Zoroastrian religion) is to be found in the Vedas, where he is called
_Vach_. It would be here impossible to enter into an examination of the
question how far these early religions seem to shadow forth the mystical
doctrine of the _Logos_. The evil principle opposed to Ormuzd is
Angra-Mainyus (Ahrimanes), but in the true doctrine he is by no means
the equal of God, no more so than is Satan. The successive corruption of
pure Zoroastrianism after the time of its founder is marked by a
constant exaggeration of the power of the evil principle (suggested,
perhaps, by intercourse with devil-worshipping nations of a lower type)
until Ahrimanes becomes the rival of Ormuzd, coequal and co-eternal with
him.
Such is the simple creed of the Persians, accompanied of course by rites
and ceremonies, part invented by the reformer, part inherited from the
common Aryan parentage. It is well known that the Persians built no
temples, but worshipped Ormuzd chiefly upon the mountain-tops; that they
paid great respect to all the elements--that is to air, water, and fire,
the latter most of all--a belief which they shared with their Indian
brethren, but stopped far short of worshipping any. That they held very
strongly the separate idea of the soul, so that when once a body had
lost its life, they considered it to be a thing wholly corrupt and evil;
a doctrine which carried in the germ that of the inherent evil of
matter, as the philosophical reader will discern.
It remains to say something of their religious books. The _Zend Avesta_
was supposed to comprise the teaching of Zoroaster, and was believed to
have been written by him. Only one complete book has been preserved--it
is called the _Vendidâd_. The _Zend_ language in which the _Avesta_ is
written is the oldest known form of Persian, older than that in use at
the time of Darius the Great; but this is no proof that it dates back to
the days of Zarathustra. Part of it is in prose and part in verse, and
as in every literature we find that the fragments of verse are they
which survive the longest, it has been conjectured that the songs of the
_Zend Avesta_ (Gâthâs they are called) may even have been written by the
great reformer himself.