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The Wisdom of the East Series
EDITED BY
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr. S. A. KAPADIA
WISDOM OF THE EAST
HINDU GODS AND
HEROES
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF
THE RELIGION OF INDIA
BY
LIONEL D. BARNETT, M.A., LITT
* * * * *
PREFACE
The following pages are taken from the Forlong Bequest lectures which
I delivered in March last at the School of Oriental Studies. Owing to
exigencies of space, much of what I then said has been omitted here,
especially with regard to the worship of Siva; but enough remains to
make clear my general view, which is that the religion of the Aryans
of India was essentially a worship of spirits--sometimes spirits of
real persons, sometimes imaginary spirits--and that, although in early
days it provisionally found room for personifications of natural
forces, it could not digest them into Great Gods, and therefore they
have either disappeared or, if surviving, remain as mere Struldbrugs.
Thus I am a heretic in relation to both the Solar Theory and the
Vegetation Theory, as everyone must be who takes the trouble to study
Hindu nature without prejudice.
L. D. B.
_May 29, 1922._
* * * * *
CONTENTS
I. THE VEDIC AGE:
Popular Religion, p. 9--Rig-veda and priestly religion, p.
11--Dyaus-Zeus, p. 14--Ushas, p. 18--Surya, p. 19--Savita, p.
19--Mitra and Varuna, p. 19--Agni, p. 22--Soma, p. 23--Indra, p.
25--The Asvins, p. 35--Vishnu, p. 37--Rudra-Siva, p. 42--Summary, p.
42.
II. THE AGE OF THE BRAHMANAS:
Growth of Brahman influence in expanding Aryan society, p. 45--System
of priestly doctrine: theory of Sacrifice and mechanical control of
nature thereby, p. 48--Its antinomianism: partly corrected by the
growing cult of Rudra-Siva, p. 53--The Upanishads: their relation to
the Brahmanas, p. 59--Brahma the Absolute, p. 60--Karma-Samsara, p.
63--Results: Saiva Theism, p. 65--Krishna: early history and legends,
p. 66--Teachings, p. 68.
III. THE EPICS, AND LATER:
I. The Great War and the Pandavas, p. 70--Vishnu-Krishna, p.
74--Narayana, p. 76--Bhagavad-gita and Narayaniya, p. 77--Growth of
church of Vishnu-Krishna, p. 79--Worship of Pandavas, p. 92--New
erotic and romantic Krishnaism, p. 94.
II. Rama: legend of Rama and constitution of Ramayana, p. 98.
III. Some later Preachers, p. 103--Religions of Vishnu-Krishna and
Siva in Southern India, p. 103--Samkara Acharya, p. 105--Ramanuja, p.
107--Nimbarka, Madhva, Vallabha, p. 108--Jnanadeva, p. 109--Nama-deva,
p. 109--Tukaram, p. 109--Ramananda, p. 110--Tulsi Das, p. 110--Kabir,
p. 110--Nanak, p. 110--Chaitanya, p. 110.
IV. Brahma and the Trimurti, p. 111--Dattatreya, p. 114.
V. Two Modern Instances, p. 116.
CONCLUSION.
* * * * *
EDITORIAL NOTE
The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They
desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall
be the ambassadors of goodwill and understanding between East and
West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this
endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the
highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper
knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought
may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither
despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour.
L. CRANMER-BYNG.
S. A. KAPADIA.
NORTHBROOK SOCIETY,
21 CROMWELL ROAD,
KENSINGTON, S. W.
* * * * *
HINDU GODS AND HEROES
CHAPTER I
THE VEDIC AGE
Let us imagine we are in a village of an Aryan tribe in the Eastern
Panjab something more than thirty centuries ago. It is made up of a
few large huts, round which cluster smaller ones, all of them rudely
built, mostly of bamboo; in the other larger ones dwell the heads of
families, while the smaller ones shelter their kinsfolk and followers,
for this is a patriarchal world, and the housefather gives the law to
his household. The people are mostly a comely folk, tall and
clean-limbed, and rather fair of skin, with well-cut features and
straight noses; but among them are not a few squat and ugly men and
women, flat-nosed and nearly black in colour, who were once the free
dwellers in this land, and now have become slaves or serfs to their
Aryan conquerors. Around the village are fields where bullocks are
dragging rough ploughs; and beyond these are woods and moors in which
lurk wild men, and beyond these are the lands of other Aryan tribes.
Life in the village is simple and rude, but not uneventful, for the
village is part of a tribe, and tribes are constantly fighting with
one another, as well as with the dark-skinned men who often try to
drive back the Aryans, sometimes in small forays and sometimes in
massed hordes. But the world in which the village is interested is a
small one, and hardly extends beyond the bounds of the land where its
tribe dwells. It knows something of the land of the Five Rivers, in
one corner of which it lives, and something even of the lands to the
north of it, and to the west as far as the mountains and deserts,
where live men of its own kind and tongue; but beyond these limits it
has no knowledge. Only a few bold spirits have travelled eastward
across the high slope that divides the land of the Five Rivers from
the strange and mysterious countries around the great rivers Ganga and
Yamuna, the unknown land of deep forests and swarming dark-skinned
men.
In the matter of religion these Aryans care a good deal about charms
and spells, black and white magic, for preventing or curing all kinds
of diseases or mishaps, for winning success in love and war and trade
and husbandry, for bringing harm upon enemies or rivals--charms which
a few centuries later will be dressed up in Rigvedic style, stuffed
out with imitations of Rigvedic hymns, and published under the name of
Atharva veda, "the lore of the Atharvans," by wizards who claim to
belong to the old priestly clans of Atharvan and Angiras. But we have
not yet come so far, and as yet all that these people can tell us is a
great deal about their black and white magic, in which they are hugely
interested, and a fair amount about certain valiant men of olden times
who are now worshipped by them as helpful spirits, and a little about
some vague spirits who are in the sun and the air and the fire and
other places, and are very high and great, but are not interesting at
all.
This popular religion seems to be a hopeless one, without ideals and
symbols of love and hope. Is there nothing better to be found in this
place? Yes, there is a priestly religion also; and if we would know
something about it we must listen to the chanting of the priests, the
_brahmans_ or men of the "holy spirit," as they are called, who are
holding a sacrifice now on behalf of the rich lord who lives in the
largest house in the village--a service for which they expect to be
paid with a handsome fee of oxen and gold. They are priests by
heredity, wise in the knowledge of the ways of the gods; some of them
understand how to compose _riks_, or hymns, in the fine speech dear to
their order, hymns which are almost sure to win the gods' favour, and
all of them know how the sacrifices shall be performed with perfect
exactness so that no slip or imperfection may mar their efficacy.
Their psalms are called _Rig-veda_, "lore of the verses," and they set
themselves to find grace in the ears of the many gods whom these
priests worship, sometimes by open praise and sometimes by riddling
description of the exploits and nature of the gods. Often they are
very fine; but always they are the work of priests, artists in ritual.
And if you look heedfully into it you will also mark that these
priests are inclined to think that the act of sacrifice, the offering
of, say, certain oblations in a particular manner with particular
words accompanying them, is in itself potent, quite apart from the
psalms which they sing over it, that it has a magic power of its own
over the machinery of nature.[1] Really this is no new idea of our
Vedic priests; ten thousand years before them their remote forefathers
believed it and acted upon it, and if for example they wanted rain
they would sprinkle drops of water and utter magic words. Our Vedic
priests have now a different kind of symbols, but all the same they
still have the notion that ceremony, _rita_ as they call it, has a
magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we shall see much
issuing from it.
[Footnote 1: Cf. e.g. RV. III. xxxii. 12.]
Who are the gods to whom these priests offer their prayers and psalms?
They are many, and of various kinds. Most of them are taken from the
religion of the people, and dressed in new garb according to the
imagination of the priest; and a few are priestly inventions
altogether. There is Dyaush-pita, the Sky-father, with Prithivi Mata,
the Earth-mother; there are Vayu the Wind-spirit, Parjanya the
Rain-god, Surya the Sun-god, and other spirits of the sky such as
Savita; there is the Dawn-goddess, Ushas. All these are or were
originally deified powers of nature: the people, though their
imagination created them, have never felt any deep interest in them,
and the priests who have taken them into their charge, though they
treat them very courteously and sing to them elegant hymns full of
figures of speech, have not been able to cover them with the flesh and
blood of living personality. Then we have Agni the Fire-god, and Soma
the spirit of the intoxicating juice of the soma-plant, which is used
to inspire the pious to drunken raptures in certain ceremonies; both
of these have acquired a peculiar importance through their association
with priestly worship, especially Agni, because he, as bearing to the
gods the sacrifices cast into his flames, has become the ideal Priest
and divine Paraclete of Heaven. Nevertheless all this hieratic
importance has not made them gods in the deeper sense, reigning in the
hearts of men. Then we find powers of doubtful origin, Mitra and
Varuna and Vishnu and Rudra, and figures of heroic legend, like the
warrior Indra and the twin charioteers called Asvinaa and Nasatya. All
these, with many others, have their worship in the Rig-veda: the
priests sing their praises lustily, and often speak now of one deity,
now of another, as being the highest divinity, without the least
consistency.
Some savage races believe in a highest god or first divine Being in
whom they feel little personal interest. They seldom speak of him, and
hardly ever worship him. So it seems to be with Dyaush-pita. The
priests speak of him and to him, but only in connexion with other
gods; he has not a single whole hymn in his honour, and the only
definite attribute that attaches to him is that of fatherhood. Yet he
has become a great god among other races akin in speech to the Aryans
of India: Dyaush-pita is phonetically the same as the Greek [Greek:
Zeus pater] and the Latin _Iuppiter_. How comes it then that he is
not, and apparently never was, a god in the true sense among the
Indian Aryans? Because, I think, his name has always betrayed him. To
call a deity "Sky-father" is to label him as a mere abstraction. No
mystery, no possibility of human personality, can gather round those
two plain prose words. So long as a deity is known by the name of the
physical agency that he represents, so long will he be unable to grow
into a personal God in India. The priests may sing vociferous psalms
to Vayu the Wind-spirit and Surya the Sun-spirit, and even to their
beloved Agni the Fire-god; but sing as much as they will, they never
can make the people in general take them to their hearts.
Observe what a different history is that of Zeus among the
Greeks--Zeus, Father of Gods and Men, the ideal of kingly majesty and
wisdom and goodness. The reason is patent. Ages and ages before the
days when the Homeric poets sang, the Greeks had forgotten that Zeus
originally meant "sky": it had become to them a personal name of a
great spiritual power, which they were free to invest with the noblest
ideal of personality. But very likely there is also another reason: I
believe that the Olympian Zeus, as modelled by Homer and accepted by
following generations, was not the original [Greek: _Zeus pater_] at
all, but a usurper who had robbed the old Sky-father of his throne and
of his title as well, that he was at the outset a hero-king who some
time after his death was raised to the seat and dignity of the old
Sky-father and received likewise his name. This theory explains the
old hero-sagas which are connected with Zeus and the strange fact that
the Cretans pointed to a spot in their island where they believed Zeus
was buried. It explains why legends persistently averred that Zeus
expelled his father Kronos from the throne and suppressed the Titan
dynasty: on my view, Kronos was the original Father Zeus, and his name
of Zeus and rank as chief god were appropriated by a deified hero.
How natural such a process was in those days may be seen from the
liturgy of Unas on the pyramids at Sakkarah in Egypt.[2] Here Unas
is described as rising in heaven after his death as a supreme god,
devouring his fathers and mothers, slaughtering the gods, eating their
"magical powers," and swallowing their "spirit-souls," so that he thus
becomes "the first-born of the first-born gods," omniscient,
omnipotent, and eternal, identified with the Osiris, the highest god.
Now this Unas was a real historical man; he was the last king of the
Fifth Dynasty, and was deified after death, just like any other king
of Egypt. The early Egyptians, like many savage tribes, regarded all
their kings as gods on earth and paid them formal worship after their
death; the later Egyptians, going a step further, worshipped them even
in their lifetime as embodiments of the gods.[3] What is said in the
liturgy for the deification of Unas is much the same as was said of
other kings. The dead king in early Egypt becomes a god, even the
greatest of the gods, and he assumes the name of that god[4]; he
overcomes the other gods by brute force, he kills and devours them.
This is very like what I think was the case with Zeus; the main
difference is that in Egypt the _character_ of the deified king was
merged in that of the old god, and men continued to regard the latter
in exactly the same light as before; but among the forefathers of the
Greeks the reverse happened in at least one case, that of Zeus, where
the character of a hero who had peculiarly fascinated popular
imagination partly eclipsed that of the old god whose name and rank he
usurped. The reason for this, I suppose, is that even the early
Egyptians had already a conservative religion with fixed traditions
and a priesthood that forgot nothing,[5] whereas among the forefathers
of the Greeks, who were wandering savages, social order and religion
were in a very fluid state. However that may be, a deified hero might
oust an older god and reign under his name; and this theory explains
many difficulties in the legends of Zeus.
[Footnote 2: Sir E. A. W. Budge, _Literature of the Ancient
Egyptians_, p. 21 ff., and _Gods of the Egyptians_, i, pp. 32 f., 43.]
[Footnote 3: Erman, _Handbook of Egyptian Religion_, p. 37 f.]
[Footnote 4: Budge, _Lit. of the Egyptians_, p. 21; Erman, _ut supra_,
p. 37 f.]
[Footnote 5: It is even possible that in one case, that of Osiris, a
hero in Egypt may have eclipsed by his personality the god whom he
ousted. See Sir J. W. Frazer's _Adonis, Attis, Osiris_, ii, p. 200,
and Sir W. Ridgeway's _Dramas and Dramatic Dances, etc._, p. 94 ff.]
As to the Roman Iuppiter, I need not say much about him. Like all the
genuine gods of Latium, he never was much more than an abstraction
until the Greeks came with their literature and dressed him in the
wardrobe of their Zeus.
Coming now to Ushas, the Lady of the Dawn, and looking at her name
from the standpoint of comparative philosophy, we see that the word
_ushas_ is closely connected with the Greek [Greek: heos] and the
Latin _aurora_. But when we read the literature, we are astonished to
find that while the Greek Dawn-lady has remained almost always a mere
abstraction, the Indian spirit is a lovely, living woman instinct with
the richest sensuous charms of the East. Some twenty hymns are
addressed to her, and for the most part they are alive with real
poetry, with a sense of beauty and gladness and sometimes withal an
under-note of sadness for the brief joys of life. But when we look
carefully into it we notice a curious thing: all this hymn-singing to
Ushas is purely literary and artistic, and there is practically no
religion at all at the back of it. A few stories are told of her, but
they seem to convince no one, and she certainly has no ritual worship
apart from these hymns, which are really poetical essays more than
anything else. The priestly poets are thrilled with sincere emotion at
the sight of the dawn, and are inspired by it to stately and lively
descriptions of its beauties and to touching reflections upon the
passing of time and mortal life; but in this scene Ushas herself is
hardly more than a model from an artist's studio, in a very Bohemian
quarter. More than once on account of her free display of her charms
she is compared to a dancing girl, or even a common harlot! Here the
imagination is at work which in course of time will populate the Hindu
Paradise with a celestial _corps de ballet_, the fair and frail
Apsarasas. Our Vedic Ushas is a forerunner of that gay company. A
charming person, indeed; but certainly no genuine goddess.
As his name shows, Surya is the spirit of the sun. We hear a good deal
about him in the Rig-veda, but the whole of it is merely description
of the power of the sun in the order of nature, partly allegorical,
and partly literal. He is only a nature-power, not a personal god. The
case is not quite so clear with Savita, whose name seems to mean
literally "stimulator," "one who stirs up." On the whole it seems most
likely that he represents the sun, as the vivifying power in nature,
though some[6] think that he was originally an abstraction of the
vivifying forces in the world and later became connected with the sun.
However this may be, Savita is and remains an impersonal spirit with
no human element in his character.
[Footnote 6: See Oldenberg, _Religion des Veda_, p. 64 f.]
Still more perplexing are the two deities Mitra and Varuna, who are
very often associated with one another, and apparently are related.
Mitra certainly is an old god: if we go over the mountains to the west
and north-west of the country of our Indian Aryans, we shall find
their kinsmen in Persia and Bactria worshipping him as a power that
maintains the laws of righteousness and guards the sanctity of oaths
and engagements, who by means of his watchmen keeps mankind under his
observation and with his terrible weapons crushes evil powers. The
Indian Aryans tell almost exactly the same tale of their Mitra and his
companion Varuna, who perhaps is simply a doublet of Mitra with a
different name, which perhaps is due to a variety of worship. But they
have more to say of Varuna than of Mitra. In Varuna we have the
highest ideal of spirituality that Hindu religion will reach for many
centuries. Not only is he described as supreme controller of the order
of nature--that is an attribute which these priestly poets ascribe
with generous inconsistency to many others of their deities--but he is
likewise the omniscient guardian of the moral law and the rule of
religion, sternly punishing sin and falsehood with his dreaded noose,
but showing mercy to the penitent and graciously communing with the
sage who has found favour in his eyes.
But Mitra and Varuna will not enjoy this exalted rank for long. Soon
the priests will declare that Mitra rules over the day and Varuna over
the night (TS. II. i. 7, 4; VI. iv. 8, 3), and then Varuna will begin
to sink in honour. The "noose of Varuna" will come to mean merely the
disease of dropsy. His connection with the darkness of the night will
cause men to think of him with fear; and in their dread they will
forget his ancient attributes of universal righteousness, justice, and
mercy, and remember him chiefly as an avenger of guilt. They will
banish him to the distant seas, whose rivers he now guides over the
earth in his gracious government of nature; and there he will dwell in
exile for ever, remembered only to be feared. And Mitra will become
merely another name for the sun.
What is the origin of this singular couple? And why are they destined
to this fall? Neither of these questions can be answered by anything
but conjectures. There is no evidence either from Indian or from
Iranian religion that Mitra or his double Varuna grew out of the
worship of the sun or the sky, although in their worship they were
sometimes connected with the sun and the sky. However far backwards we
look, we still find them essentially spirits of natural order and
moral law, gods in the higher sense of the word. But their character,
and especially the character of Varuna, it seems to me, is rather too
high to survive the competition of rival cults, such as that of the
popular hero Indra and the priests' darling Agni, which tend to
engross the interest of worshippers lay and cleric, and to blunt their
relish for more spiritual ideals. So Mitra and Varuna become stunted
in their growth; and at last comes the fatal time when they are
identified with the sky by day and night. This is the final blow. No
deity that is plainly limited to any one phase or form of nature in
India can be or become a great god; and speedily all their real
divinity fades away from Mitra and Varuna, and they shrivel into
insignificance.
Next we turn to a spirit of a very different sort, the Fire-god, Agni.
The word _agni_ is identical with the Latin _ignis_; it means "fire,"
and nothing else but fire, and this fact is quite sufficient to
prevent Agni from becoming a great god. The priests indeed do their
best, by fertile fancy and endless repetition of his praises, to lift
him to that rank; but even they cannot do it. From the days of the
earliest generations of men Fire was a spirit; and the household fire,
which cooks the food of the family and receives its simple oblations
of clarified butter, is a kindly genius of the home. But with all his
usefulness and elfish mystery Fire simply remains fire, and there's an
end of it, for the ordinary man. But the priests will not have it so.
The chief concern of their lives is with sacrifice, and their deepest
interest is in the spirit of the sacrificial fire. All the riches of
their imagination and their vocabulary are lavished upon him, his
forms and his activities. They have devoted to him about 200 hymns and
many occasional verses, in which they dwell with constant delight and
ingenious metaphor upon his splendour, his power, his birth from
wood, from the two firesticks, from trees of the forest, from stones,
or as lightning from the clouds, his kinship with the sun, his
dwelling in three abodes (viz. as a rule on earth, in the clouds as
lightning, and in the upper heavens as the sun), his place in the
homes of men as a holy guest, a friend and a kinsman, his protection
of worshippers against evil spirits and malignant sorcerers, and
especially his function of conveying the oblation poured into his
flames up to the gods. Thus they are led to represent him as the
divine Priest, the ideal hierophant, in whom are united the functions
of the three chief classes of Rigvedic sacrificial priests, the
_hota_, _adhvaryu_, and _brahman_, and hence as an all-knowing sage
and seer. If infinite zeal and ingenuity in singing Agni's praises and
glorifying his activities can avail to raise him to the rank of a
great god, we may expect to find him very near the top. But it is not
to be. The priests cannot convince the plain man of Agni's
super-godhead, and soon they will fail to convince even themselves.
The time will shortly come when they will regard all these gods as
little more than puppets whose strings are pulled by the mysterious
spirit of the sacrifice.
The priests have another pet deity, Soma. For the sacred rites include
the pressing and drinking of the fermented yellow juice of the
soma-plant, an acid draught with intoxicating powers, which when mixed
with milk and drunk in the priestly rites inspires religious ecstasy.
This drinking of the soma-juice is already an ancient and important
feature in the worship of our Aryans, as it is also among their
kinsmen in Iran; so it is no wonder that the spirit of the sacred
plant has been made by the priests into an important deity and
celebrated with endless abundance of praise and prayer. As with Agni,
Soma's appearance and properties are described with inexhaustible
wealth of epithets and metaphors. The poets love to dwell on the
mystic powers of this wonderful potion, which can heal sickness of
soul and body and inspire gods and men to mighty deeds and holy
ecstasy. Most often they tell how the god Indra drank huge potions of
it to strengthen himself for his great fight with the dragon Vritra.
Most of this worship is of priestly invention; voluminous as its
rhetoric is, it makes no great impression on the laity, nor perhaps on
the clergy either. Some of the more ingenious of the priests are
already beginning to trace an affinity between Soma and the moon. The
yellow soma-stalks swell in the water of the pressing-vat, as the
yellow moon waxes in the sky; the _soma_ has a magical power of
stimulation, and the moon sends forth a mystic liquid influence over
the vegetation of the earth, and especially over magic plants; the
soma is an ambrosia drunk by gods and heroes to inspire them to mighty
deeds, and the moon is a bowl of ambrosia which is periodically drunk
by the gods and therefore wanes month by month. The next step will
soon be taken, and the priests will say that Soma _is_ the moon; and
literature will then obediently accept this statement, and, gradually
forgetting nearly everything that Soma meant to the Rigvedic priests,
will use the name Soma merely as a secondary name for Chandra, the
moon and its god. A very illuminating process, which shows how a god
may utterly change his nature. Now we turn to the hero-gods.
Indra and the Asvina at the beginning came to be worshipped because
they were heroes, men who were supposed to have wrought marvellously
noble and valiant deeds in dim far-off days, saviours of the
afflicted, champions of the right, and who for this reason were
worshipped after death, perhaps even before death, as divine beings,
and gradually became associated in their legends and the forms of
their worship with all kinds of other gods. Times change, gods grow
old and fade away, but the remembrance of great deeds lives on in
strange wild legends, which, however much they may borrow from other
worships and however much they may be obscured by the phantom lights
of false fancy, still throw a glimmer of true light back through the
darkness of the ages into an immeasurably distant past.
Indra is a mighty giant, tawny of hair and beard and tawny of aspect.
The poets tell us that he bears up or stretches out earth and sky,
even that he has created heaven and earth. He is a monarch supreme
among the gods, the lord of all beings, immeasurable and irresistible
of power. He rides in a golden chariot drawn by two tawny horses, or
many horses, even as many as eleven hundred, and he bears as his chief
weapon the _vajra_, or thunderbolt, sometimes also a bow with arrows,
a hook, or a net. Of all drinkers of soma he is the lustiest; he
swills many lakes of it, and he eats mightily of the flesh of bulls
and buffaloes. To his worshippers he gives abundance of wealth and
happiness, and he leads them to victory over hostile tribes of Aryans
and the still more dreaded hordes of dark-skins, the Dasas and Dasyus.
He guided the princes Yadu and Turvasa across the rivers, he aided
Divodasa Atithigva to discomfit the dark-skinned Sambara, he gave to
Divodasa's son Sudas the victory over the armies of the ten allied
kings beside the river Parushni. Many are the names of the devils and
demons that have fallen before him; but most glorious of all his deeds
is the conquest of Vritra, the dragon dwelling in a mountain fastness
amidst the waters, where Indra, accompanied by the troop of Maruts, or
storm-gods, slew the monster with his bolt and set free the waters, or
recovered the hidden kine. Our poets sing endless variations on this
theme, and sometimes speak of Indra repeating the exploit for the
benefit of his worshippers, which is as much as to say that they, or
at least some of them, think it an allegory.
In all this maze of savage fancy and priestly invention and wild
exaggeration there are some points that stand out clearly. Indra is a
god of the people, particularly of the fighting man, a glorified type
of the fair-haired, hard-fighting, hard-drinking forefathers of the
Indian Aryans and their distant cousins the Hellenes; and therefore he
is the champion of their armies in battles. He is not a fiction of
hieratic imagination, whom priests regale with hyperbolic flattery
qualified only by the lukewarmness of their belief in their own words.
He is a living personality in the faith of the people; the priests
only invent words to express the people's faith, and perhaps add to
the old legends some riddling fancies of their own. Many times they
tell us that after conquering Vritra and setting free the waters or
the kine Indra created the light, the dawn, or the sun; or they say
that he produced them without mentioning any fight with Vritra;
sometimes they speak of him as setting free "the kine of the Morning,"
which means that they understood the cows to signify the light of
morning, and it would seem also that they thought that the waters
mentioned in the story signified the rain. But why do they speak of
these acts as heroic deeds, exploits of a mighty warrior, in the same
tone and with the same epic fire as when they sing of Indra's battles
in times near to their own, real battles in which their own
forefathers, strong in their faith in the god, shattered the armies of
hostile Aryan tribes or the fortresses of dark-skinned natives? The
personality of Indra and the spirit in which his deeds are recounted
remind us of hero-sagas; the allegories which the poets read into them
are on the other hand quite in the style of the priest. How can we
explain the presence of these two voices? Besides, why should the
setting free of the rain or the daylight be a peculiarly heroic
attribute of Indra? Other gods are said to do the same things as part
of their regular duties: Parjanya, Mitra and Varuna, Dyaus, dispense
the rain, others the light.
The explanation is simple. Indra, it seems to me, is a god of just the
same sort as Zeus, whose nature and history I have already explained
according to my lights. In the far-away past Indra was simply a hero:
very likely he was once a chieftain on earth. The story of his great
deeds so fascinated the imagination of men that they worshipped his
memory and at last raised him to the rank of a chief god. Now they had
previously worshipped two very high gods; one of these was
Dyaush-pita, the Sky-father, of whom I have spoken before, and another
was Tvashta, the All-creator. So some of them, as the Rig-veda
proves, declared that Dyaus was the father of Indra, and others appear
to have given this honour to Tvashta, while others regarded Tvashta as
Indra's grandfather; and some even said that in order to obtain the
soma to inspire him to divine deeds Indra killed his father, which of
course is just an imaginative way of saying that Indra was made into a
god and worshipped in place of the elder god.
The puzzle now is solved. Indra has remained down to the time of the
Rig-veda true to his early nature, an epic hero and typical warrior;
but he has also borrowed from the old Sky-father the chief attributes
of a sky-spirit, especially the giving of rain and the making of
light, which the priests of the Rig-veda riddlingly describe as
setting free the waters and the cows. He bears the thunderbolt, as
does also Zeus; like Zeus, he has got it from the Sky-father, who had
likewise a thunderbolt, according to some Rigvedic poets, though
others say it was forged for him by Tvashta, his other father. I even
venture to think that there is a kernel of heroic legend in the story
of the slaying of Vritra; that at bottom it is a tale relating how
Indra with a band of brave fellows stormed a mountain hold surrounded
by water in which dwelt a wicked chieftain who had carried away the
cattle of his people, and that when Indra had risen to the rank of a
great god of the sky men added to this plain tale much mythical
decoration appropriate to his new quality, turning the comrades of
Indra into the storm-gods and interpreting the waters and cows to mean
rain and daylight. Since most of us are agreed that stories such as
that of Indra defeating Sambara for the benefit of Divodasa refer to
real events, it seems unnatural to suppose that the Vritra-legend is a
purely imaginary myth. We can thus explain why the ideas of Indra
setting free the rain and the light fit in so awkwardly with the
heroic element in the legend: for they are merely secondary
attributes, borrowed from the myths of other gods and mechanically
attached to Indra on his elevation in the pantheon. But we can explain
much more. There is a regular cycle of hero-saga connected with Indra
which is visible or half-visible at the back of some of the Vedic
hymns and of the priestly literature which is destined to follow them.
The truth is that the priests of the Rig-veda on the whole have not
quite made up their minds about Indra's merits, and we shall find them
a few generations hence equally uncertain. They praise his heroic
deeds lustily and admire his power immensely; but they are keenly
aware that he is a god with a past, and sometimes they dwell on that.
Their favourite method is to relate some of his former questionable
deeds in the form of a reproach, and then to turn the story to his
credit in some way or another; but as time goes on and the priests
think less and less of most of their gods, Indra's character will
steadily sink, and in the end we shall find him playing a subordinate
part, a debauched king in a sensuous paradise, popularly worshipped as
a giver of rain. But this is to anticipate. As yet Indra is to the
Rigvedic priests a very great god; but how did he become so? If we
read carefully the hymn RV. IV. xviii.[7] we see at the back of it a
story somewhat like this. Before he was born, Tvashta, Indra's
grandfather, knew that Indra would dispossess him of his sovereignty
over the gods, and therefore did his best to prevent his birth (cf.
RV. III. xlviii.); but the baby Indra would not be denied, and he
forced his way into the light of day through the side of his mother
Aditi, who seems to be the same as Mother Earth (cf. _Ved. Stud._, ii,
p. 86), killed his father, and drank Tvashta's soma, by which he
obtained divine powers. In v. 12 of this hymn Indra excuses himself by
saying that he was in great straits, and that then the soma was
brought to him by an eagle. What these straits were is indicated in
another hymn (IV. xxvii.), which tells us that he was imprisoned, and
escaped on the back of the eagle, which he compelled to carry him; the
watchman Krisanu shot an arrow at the bird, but it passed harmlessly
through its feathers. Evidently in the story Indra had a hard struggle
with rival gods. One poet says (RV. IV. xxx. 3): "Not even all the
gods, O Indra, defeated thee, when thou didst lengthen days into
nights," which apparently refers also to some miracle like that
ascribed to Joshua. Another tradition (MS. I. vi. 12) relates that
while Indra and his brother Vivasvan were still unborn they declared
their resolve to oust the Adityas, the elder sons of their mother
Aditi; so the Adityas tried to kill them when born, and actually slew
Vivasvan, but Indra escaped. Another version (TS. II. iv. 13) says
that the gods, being afraid of Indra, bound him with fetters before he
was born; and at the same time Indra is identified with the Rajanya,
or warrior class, as its type and representative.[8] This last point
is immensely important, for it really clinches the matter. Not once,
but repeatedly, the priestly literature of the generations that will
follow immediately after that of the Rig-veda will be found to treat
Indra as the type of the warrior order.[9] They will describe an
imaginary coronation-ceremony of Indra, ending with these words:
"Anointed with this great anointment Indra won all victories, found
all the worlds, attained the superiority, pre-eminence, and supremacy
over all the gods, and having won the overlordship, the paramount
rule, the self rule, the sovereignty, the supreme authority, the
kingship, the great kingship, the suzerainty in this world,
self-existing, self-ruling, immortal, in yonder world of heaven,
having attained all desires he became immortal."[10] Thus we see that
amidst the maze of obscure legends about Indra there are three points
which stand out with perfect clearness. They are, firstly, that Indra
was a usurper; secondly, that the older gods fought hard but vainly to
keep him from supreme divinity, and that in his struggle he killed his
father; and thirdly, that he was identified with the warrior class, as
opposed to the priestly order, or Brahmans. This antagonism to the
Brahmans is brought out very clearly in some versions of the tales of
his exploits. More than once the poets of the Rig-veda hint that his
slaying of Vritra involved some guilt, the guilt of _brahma-hatya_, or
slaughter of a being in whom the _brahma_, or holy spirit, was
embodied[11]; and this is explained clearly in a priestly tale (TS.
II. v. 2, 1 ff.; cf. SB. I. i. 3, 4, vi. 3, 8), according to which
Indra from jealousy killed Tvashta's son Visvarupa, who was chaplain
of the gods, and thus he incurred the guilt of _brahma-hatya_. Then
Tvashta held a soma-sacrifice; Indra, being excluded from it, broke up
the ceremony and himself drank the soma. The soma that was left over
Tvashta cast into one of the sacred fires and produced thereby from it
the giant Vritra, by whom the whole universe, including Agni and Soma,
was enveloped (cf. the later version in Mahabharata, V. viii. f.). By
slaying him Indra again became guilty of _brahma-hatya_; and some
Rigvedic poets hint that it was the consciousness of this sin which
made him flee away after the deed was done.
[Footnote 7: I follow in the interpretation of this hymn E. Sieg, _Die
Sagenstoffe des Rgveda_, i. p. 76 ff. Cf. on the subject _Ved. Stud._,
i. p. 211, ii. pp. 42-54. Charpentier, _Die Suparnasage_, takes a
somewhat different view of RV. IV. xxvi.-xxvii., which, however, does
not convince me; I rather suspect that RV. IV. xxvi. 1 and 4, with
their mention of Manu, to whom the soma was brought, are echoes of an
ancient and true tradition that Indra was once a mortal.]
[Footnote 8: The other legend in MS. II. i. 12, that Aditi bound the
unborn Indra with an iron fetter, with which he was born, and of which
he was able to rid himself by means of a sacrifice, is probably
later.]
[Footnote 9: E.g. AB. VII. xxxi., VIII. xii. Cf. BA. Up. I. iv.
11-13.]
[Footnote 10: AB. VIII. xiv. (Keith's translation).]
[Footnote 11: Cf. Sayana on RV. I. xciii. 5.]
These bits of saga prove, as effectually as is possible in a case like
this, that Indra was originally a warrior-king or chieftain who was
deified, perhaps by the priestly tribe of the Angirasas, who claim in
some of the hymns to have aided him in his fight with Vritra, and that
he thus rose to the first rank in the pantheon, gathering round
himself a great cycle of heroic legend based upon those traditions,
and only secondarily and by artificial invention becoming associated
with the control of the rain and the daylight.
The name Asvina means "The Two Horsemen"; what their other name,
Nasatya, signifies nobody has satisfactorily explained. But even with
the name Asvina there is a difficulty. They are described usually as
riding together in a chariot which is sometimes said to be drawn by
horses, and this would suit their name; but more often the poets say
that their chariot is drawn by birds, such as eagles or swans, and
sometimes even by a buffalo or buffaloes, or by an ass. I do not see
how we can escape from this difficulty except by supposing that
popular imagination in regard to this matter varied from very early
times, but preferred to think of them as having horses. At any rate
they are very ancient gods, for the people of Iran also have
traditions about them, and in the far-away land of the Mitanni, in the
north of Mesopotamia, they are invoked together with Indra, Mitra, and
Varuna to sanction treaties. In India the Aryans keep them very busy,
for they are more than anything else gods of help. Thrice every day
and thrice every night they sally forth on their patrols through earth
and heaven, in order to aid the distressed[12]: and the poets tell us
the names of many persons whom they have relieved, such as old
Chyavana, whom they restored to youth and love, Bhujyu, whom they
rescued from drowning in the ocean, Atri, whom they saved from a fiery
pit, Vispala, to whom when her leg had been cut off they gave one of
iron, and Ghosha, to whom they brought a husband. Many other helpful
acts are ascribed to them, and it is very likely that at least some of
these stories are more or less true. Another legend relates that they
jointly wedded Surya, the daughter of the Sun-god, who chose them from
amongst the other gods.[13]
[Footnote 12: Cf. _Ved. Studien_, ii. p. 31, RV. I. xxxiv. 2.]
[Footnote 13: Cf. _Ved. Studien_, i. p. 14 ff.]
Amidst the medley of saga and facts and poetical imagination which
surrounds the Asvina, can we see the outlines of their original
character? It is hard to say: opinions must differ. The Aryans of
India are inclined to say that they are simply divine kings active in
good works; but the priests are perhaps beginning to fancy that they
may be embodiments of powers of nature--they are not sure which--and
in course of time they will have various theories, partly connected
with their rituals. But really all that is certain in the Vedic age
about the Asvins is that they are an ancient pair of saviour-gods who
ride about in a chariot and render constant services to mankind. We
are tempted however to see a likeness between them and the [Greek:
Dios koro] of the distant Hellenes, the heroes Kastor and Polydeukes,
Castor and Pollux, the twin Horsemen who are saviours of afflicted
mankind by land and sea. There are difficulties in the way of this
theory; but they are not unsurmountable, and I believe that the
Asvina of India have the same origin as the Twin Horsemen of Greece.
At any rate both the pairs are hero-gods, whose divinity has been
created by mankind's need for help and admiration for valour. Whether
there was any human history at the back of this process we cannot say.
Now we may leave the heroes and consider a god of a very different
kind, Vishnu.
The Rig-veda has not very much to say about Vishnu, and what it says
is puzzling. The poets figure him as a beneficent young giant, of
unknown parentage, with two characteristic attributes: the first of
these is his three mystic strides, the second his close association
with Indra. Very often they refer to these three strides, sometimes
using the verb _vi-kram_, "to step out," sometimes the adjectives
_uru-krama_, "widely-stepping," and _uru-gaya_, "wide-going." The
three steps carry Vishnu across the three divisions of the universe,
in the highest of which is his home, which apparently he shares with
Indra (RV. I. xxxii. 20, cliv. 5-6, III. lv. 10; cf. AB. I. i., etc.).
Some of them are beginning to imagine that these steps symbolise the
passage of the sun through the three divisions of the world, the
earth, sky, and upper heaven; certainly this idea will be held by many
later scholars, though a few will maintain that it denotes the sun at
its rising, at midday, and at its setting. Before long we shall find
some priests harping on the same notion in another form, saying that
Vishnu's head was cut off by accident and became the sun; and later on
we shall see Vishnu bearing as one of his weapons a chakra, or discus,
which looks like a figure of the sun. But really all this is an
afterthought: in the Veda, and the priestly literature that follows
directly upon the Veda, Vishnu is _not_ the sun. Nor do we learn what
he is very readily from his second leading attribute in the Rig-veda,
his association with Indra. Yet it is a very clearly marked trait in
his character. Not only do the poets often couple the two gods in
prayer and praise, but they often tell us that the one performed his
characteristic deeds by the help of the other. They say that Vishnu
made his three strides by the power of Indra (VIII. xii. 27), or for
the sake of Indra (Val. iv. 3), and even that Indra strode along with
Vishnu (VI. lxix. 5, VII. xcix. 6), and on the other hand they tell us
often that it was by the aid of Vishnu that Indra overcame Vritra and
other malignant foes. "Friend Vishnu, stride out lustily," cries Indra
before he can strike down Vritra (IV. xviii. 11).[14] The answer to
this riddle I find in the Brahmanas, the priestly literature which is
about to follow immediately after the Veda. In plain unequivocal words
the Brahmanas tell us again and again that _Vishnu is the
sacrifice_.[15] Evidently when they repeat this they are repeating an
old hieratic tradition; and it is one which perfectly explains the
facts of the case. Vishnu, I conceive, was originally nothing more or
less than the embodied spirit of the sacrificial rites. His name seems
to be derived from the root _vish_, meaning stimulation or
inspiration; and this is exactly what the sacrifice is supposed in
priestly theory to do. The sacrifice, accompanied by prayer and
praise, is imagined to have a magic power of its own, by which the
gods worshipped in it are strengthened to perform their divine
functions. One poet says to Indra: "When thy two wandering Bays thou
dravest hither, thy praiser laid within thine arms the thunder" (RV.
I. lxiii. 2); and still more boldly another says: "Sacrifice, Indra,
made thee wax so mighty ... worship helped thy bolt when slaying the
dragon" (III. xxxii. 12). So it would be very natural for the priests
to conceive this spirit of the sacrificial rites as a personal deity;
and this deity, the Brahmanas assure us, is Vishnu. Then the idea of
the three strides and the association with Indra would easily grow up
in the priestly imagination. The inspiring power of the sacrifice is
supposed to pervade the three realms of the universe, earth, sky, and
upper heavens; this idea is expressed in the common ritual formula
_bhur bhuvas svah_, and is symbolised by three steps taken by the
priest in certain ceremonies, which are translated into the language
of myth as the three strides of Vishnu.[16] Observe that in the
Rig-veda the upper heaven is not the dwelling-place of Vishnu only;
Agni the Fire-god, Indra and Soma have their home in it also (RV. I.
cliv. 6, IV. xxvi. 6, xxvii. 3-4, V. iii. 3, VIII. lxxxix. 8, IX.
lxiii. 27, lxvi. 30, lxviii. 6, lxxvii. 2, lxxxvi. 24, X. i. 3, xi. 4,
xcix. 8, cxliv. 4). Later, however, when their adventitious divinity
begins to fade away from Agni and Soma, and Indra is allotted a
special paradise of his own, this "highest step" will be regarded as
peculiar to Vishnu, _Vishnoh paramam padam_.
[Footnote 14: A later and distorted version of this myth appears in
AB. VI. xv.]
[Footnote 15: E.g. MS. 1. iv. 14, SB. I. i. 1, 2, 13, TB. I. ii. 5, 1,
AB. I. xv., KB. IV. ii., XVIII. viii., xiv.]
[Footnote 16: SB. I. ix. 3, 8-11. Cf. the three steps of the
Amesha-spentas from the earth to the sun, imitated in the Avestic
ritual (Avesta, transl. Darmesteter, I. 401).]
As soon as this spirit of sacrifice was thus personified, he at once
attached himself to Indra; for Indra is pre-eminently the god of
action, and for his activities he needs to be stimulated by sacrifice
and praise. As the priests will tell us in plain unvarnished words,
"he to whom the Sacrifice comes as portion slays Indra" (AB. I. iv.).
Therefore we are told that Vishnu aids Indra in his heroic exploits,
that Vishnu takes his strides and presses Soma in order that Indra may
be strengthened for his tasks. Now we can see the full meaning of
Indra's cry before striking Vritra, "Friend Vishnu, stride out
lustily!"; for until the sacrifice has put forth its mystic energy the
god cannot strike his blow. We are told also that Vishnu cooks
buffaloes and boils milk for Indra,[17] for buffaloes were no doubt
anciently offered to Indra. The vivid reality of Indra's character has
clothed Vishnu with some of its own flesh and blood; originally a
priestly abstraction, he has become through association with Indra a
living being, a real god. The blood which has thus been poured into
his veins will enable him to live through a critical period of his
life, until by combination with another deity he will rise to new and
supreme sovereignty. But of that more anon. Meanwhile let us note the
significance of this union of Vishnu and Indra in the Veda. Vishnu,
the spirit of Sacrifice, is in a sense representative of the Brahman
priesthood, and Indra, as I have shown, is commonly regarded as
typical of the warrior order. In the Rig-veda Indra is powerless
without Vishnu's mystic service, and Vishnu labours to aid Indra in
his heroic works for the welfare of men and gods. Surely this is an
allegory, though the priests may so far be only dimly conscious of its
full meaning--an allegory bodying forth the priestly ideal of the
reign of righteousness, in which the King is strong by the mystic
power of the Priest, and the Priest lives for the service of the King.
[Footnote 17: RV. VI. xvii. 11, VIII. lxvi. 10; the myth in RV. I.
lxi. 7, VIII. lxvi. 10, and TS. VI. ii. 4, 2-3 is expanded from this
original idea. Cf. Macdonell, _Vedic Myth._, p. 41.]
There is another god who is destined to become in future ages Vishnu's
chief rival--Rudra, "The Tawny," or Siva, "The Gracious." He belongs
to the realm of popular superstition, a spiteful demon ever ready to
smite men and cattle with disease, but likewise dispensing healing
balms and medicines to those that win his favour. The Rigvedic priests
as yet do not take much interest in him, and for the most part they
leave him to their somewhat despised kinsmen the Atharvans, who do a
thriving trade in hymns and spells to secure the common folk against
his wrath.
There are many more gods, godlings, and spirits in the Vedic religion;
but we must pass over them. We have seen enough, I hope, to give us a
fair idea of the nature and value of that religion in general. What
then is its value?
The Rigveda is essentially a priestly book; but it is not entirely a
priestly book. Much of the thought to which it gives utterance is
popular in origin and sentiment, and is by no means of the lowest
order. On this groundwork the priests have built up a system of
hieratic thought and ritual of their own, in which there is much that
deserves a certain respect. There is a good deal of fine poetry in
it. There is also in it some idea of a law of righteousness: in spite
of much wild and unmoral myth and fancy, its gods for the most part
are not capricious demons but spirits who act in accordance with
established laws, majestic and wise beings in whom are embodied the
highest ideals to which men have risen as yet. Moreover, the priests
in the later books have given us some mystic hymns containing vigorous
and pregnant speculations on the deepest questions of existence,
speculations which are indeed fanciful and unscientific, but which
nevertheless have in them the germs of the powerful idealism that is
destined to arise in centuries to come. On the other hand, the priests
have cast their system in the mould of ritualism. Ritual, ceremony,
sacrifice, professional benefit--these are their predominant
interests. The priestly ceremonies are conceived to possess a magical
power of their own; and the fixed laws of ritual by which these
ceremonies are regulated tend to eclipse, and finally even to swallow
up, the laws of moral righteousness under which the gods live. A few
generations more, and the priesthood will frankly announce its ritual
to be the supreme law of the universe. Meanwhile they are becoming
more and more indifferent to the personalities of the gods, when they
have preserved any; they are quite ready to ascribe attributes of one
deity to another, even attributes of nominal supremacy, with
unscrupulous inconsistency and dubious sincerity; for the
personalities of the different gods are beginning to fade away in
their eyes, and in their mind is arising the conception of a single
universal Godhead.