Towards the end of the last century the men of letters of Europe were
astonished to hear that in Asia, on the banks of the Ganges, a more
ancient and richer language had been found than that of Homer. It
offered in its words and forms striking analogies with the languages of
Rome and Athens. Interest once roused, systematic comparisons were made,
and comparative grammar was founded. The sphere of comparisons widened
and the group of Aryan languages was established.
It was thus ascertained that the languages of the Romans, of the Greeks,
of the Gauls, of the Germans, of the Lithuanians, and of the Slavs in
Europe, of the Hindoos and Persians in Asia, are made out of the same
materials and cast in the same mould; that they are only varieties of
one primitive type. The precise laws which regulated the formation of
each of these varieties were discovered, so that it is both possible to
proceed from one of these languages to the other, and to trace all of
them to the original type whence they come, to the lost type which they
reproduce. This lost type, the source of all the idioms of nearly the
whole of Europe and of a third of Asia, science has reconstructed: with
an almost absolute certainty, it has described the grammar, drawn up the
lexicon of that language, of which no direct echo remains, not the
fragment of an inscription on a broken stone, of that language of which
the life and the death are pre-historic, and which was spoken at a
period when there were as yet neither Romans, nor Hindoos, nor Greeks,
nor Persians, nor Germans, nor Celts, and when the ancestors of all
those nations were still wandering as one tribe, one knows not where,
one knows not when.
Closely following comparative grammar, almost at the same time rose up
comparative mythology, and with the ancient words awoke the gods that
they had sung, the beliefs that they had fostered. It was recognized
that if the Indo-Europeans spoke essentially the same language, they
also worshipped essentially the same gods and believed in the same
things. As comparative grammar, on hearing the sister-tongues, caught up
the echo of the mother, whose voice they repeat, so comparative
mythology, in its turn, on looking at the sister religions, has tried to
see through them the original image which they reflect. As the one
restored the words and forms of the language which lived on the lips of
the Aryans at the moment of the breaking up of the Aryan unity, the
other endeavoured to restore the gods and beliefs which lived in their
souls at the moment when, with the unity of the race, the identity of
language and belief passed away. This restoration of the pre-historic
gods and of the pre-historic beliefs is the final object of comparative
mythology, just as the reconstruction of words and forms is the final
object of comparative grammar. The object was analogous and so was the
method. It is the comparative method, which by comparing kindred
divinities and kindred beliefs, finds the original divinity and the
original belief which gave birth to them, and which are reproduced in
them. To sketch the picture of the original mythology, it is sufficient
to separate from the various derivative mythologies the essential
characteristics common to them. Every characteristic common to the
secondary religions will be legitimately referred to the primitive one,
whenever it is essential--that is to say neither borrowed from one of
the kindred religions nor due to an identical, but quite independent
development. If, for instance, the various Indo-European mythologies
agree in naming the gods _Daiva_, "the shining ones," it follows that in
the primitive mythology, in the religion of the period of unity, they
were known already as beings of light and called thus. It is a great
deal easier to admit that the seven derived religions have faithfully
repeated what has been handed down to them from their common source,
than to imagine that once separated they have created the same
conception, each one on its side, and have clothed it with the same
expression: the former hypothesis is a simple and natural induction: the
second is in reality made up of seven hypotheses, and implies seven
chances agreeing together, seven miracles.
Our object in the following pages is to give a sketch of one of the
chapters of the Aryan mythology. We try to show that the religion of the
Indo-European unity recognized a Supreme God, and we try to find the
most ancient form and the earliest origin of that conception among the
Aryans, and to follow out the transformations it has undergone in the
course of ages.
The Supreme God: Zeus, Jupiter, Varuna, Ahura Mazda.
The Aryan Gods are not organized as a Republic: they have a king. There
is over the gods a Supreme God.
Four of the Aryan mythologies have preserved a clear and precise notion
of this conception: they are those of Greece, of Italy, of ancient
India, and of ancient Persia. This Supreme God is called Zeus in Greece,
Jupiter in Italy, Varuna in ancient India, Ahura Mazda in ancient
Persia. Let us then listen to Zeus, to Jupiter, to Varuna, and to Ahura
Mazda each in his turn.
_Zeus and Jupiter._[39]--About three centuries before our era a Greek
poet thus addressed Zeus:--
"Oh! Thou most glorious of immortals, whose names are many, for ever
Almighty, Zeus, Thou who rulest nature, directing all things
according to a law, hail! To Thee all this universe moving round the
earth yields obedience, following whither thou leadest, and submits
itself to Thy rule.... So great in Thy nature, King Supreme above
all things, no work is achieved without Thee, neither on the earth,
nor in the celestial regions of ether, nor on the sea, but those
which the wicked accomplish in their folly."
This is the Zeus of the philosophers, of the Stoics, of Cleanthes: but
he was already the Zeus of the ancient poets. Powerful, omniscient, and
just is the god of Æschylus, as that of Cleanthes: he is the king of
kings, the blessed of the blessed, the sovereign power among all powers,
the only one who is free among the gods, who is the master of the
mightiest, who is subservient to no one's rule; above whom no one sits,
no one to whom from below he looks with awe; every word of his is
absolute; he is the God of deep thoughts, whose heart has dark and
hidden ways, impenetrable to the eye, and no scheme formed within his
mind has ever miscarried. Finally, he is the Father of Justice, Dike,
"the terrible virgin who breathes out on crime anger and death," it is
he who from hell raises vengeance with its slow chastisement against the
bold wayward mortal. Terpander proclaims in Zeus the essence of all
things, the god who rules over everything. Archilochus sings Zeus
father, as the God who rules the heavens, who watches the guilty and
unjust actions of men, who administers chastisements to monsters, the
God who created heaven and earth. The old man of Ascra knows that Zeus
is the father of gods and of men, that his eye sees and comprehends all
things and reaches all that he wishes. In short, as far back as the
Greek Pantheon appears in the light of history, even from Homer, Zeus
towers above the nation of gods which surrounds him. He himself
proclaims, and the other gods proclaim after him, that, unrivalled in
power and strength, he is the greatest of all; the gods, at his behest,
silently bow down before him; he would hurl into the gloomy depths of
Tartarus whomsoever should dare to disobey him: he would hurl him down
into the uttermost depths of the subterranean abyss: alone against them
all, he would master them. Should they let fall from the sky a golden
chain on which all the gods and goddesses might be suspended, they still
would be powerless, however hard they might strain to drag him from the
heavens to the earth; and if it pleased him, he could draw them up even
with the earth, even with the sea, and he would then fix the chain on
the ridge of Olympus, and suspend on it the whole universe; so much is
he above mankind, above the gods. Not only is he the most powerful, but
also he is the wisest--the =mêtietês=; he is all wisdom and he is
likewise all justice. It is from him that the judges of the sons of the
Achæans have received their laws: very good, very great, he holds
learned conversations with Themis (the law) who sits at his side;
prayers are his daughters, whom he avenges for all the insults of the
wicked.
Thus, power, wisdom, justice, belonged from all time to Zeus, to the
Zeus of Homer as well as to the Zeus of Cleanthes; to the Zeus of the
poets as to him of the philosophers, in the remotest period of paganism
as at the approach of the religion of Christ. A providential god rules
the Pantheon of the Hellenes.
What Zeus is in Greece, Jupiter is in Italy: the God who is above all
the gods. The identity of the two deities is so striking that the
ancients themselves, forestalling comparative mythology, recognized it
from the very first. He is the God, great and good amongst them all:
_Jupiter, optimus, maximus_.
_Varuna._--The most ancient of the religions of India, which the Vedas
have made known to us, has also a Zeus, whose name is Varuna.[40]
"Truly admirable for grandeur are the works of Him who has separated
the two worlds and fixed their vast extent: of Him who has set in
motion the high and sublime firmament, who has spread out the
heavens above and the earth beneath.
"These heavens and this earth which reach so far, flowing with milk,
so beautiful in form, it is by the law of Varuna that they remain
fixed, facing each other, immortal beings with fertile seed.
"This Asura,[41] who is acquainted with all things, has propped up
these heavens, he has fixed the boundaries of the earth. He is
enthroned above all the worlds, universal king; all the laws of the
world are the laws of Varuna.
"In the bottomless abyss the king Varuna has lifted up the summit of
the celestial tree.[42] It is the king Varuna who has traced out to
the sun the broad path he is to follow: to footless creatures he has
given feet so that they may run.
"Those stars, which illumine the night, where were they during the
day? Infallible are the laws of Varuna: the moon kindles itself and
walks through the night.
"Varuna has traced out paths for the sun: he has thrown forwards the
fluctuating torrent of rivers. He has dug out the wide and rapid
beds where the waves of the days, let loose, unroll themselves in
their order.
"He has put strength into the horse, milk into the cow, intellect
into the heart, Agni[43] into the waters, the sun in the sky,
soma[44] into the stone.
"The wind is thy breath, O Varuna! which roars in the atmosphere,
like the ox in the meadow. Between this earth and the sublime heaven
above, all things, O Varuna, are of thy creation."
There is an order in nature, there is a law, a habit, a rule, _a Rita_.
This law, this _Rita_, it is Varuna who has established it. He is the
god of the Rita, the god of Order, the guardian of the Rita; he is the
god of efficient and stable laws; in him rest as in a rock the fixed
immovable laws.
Organizer of the world, he is its master. He is the first of the Asuras,
"of the lords;" he is _the Asura_, "the Lord;" he is the sovereign of
the whole world, the king of all beings, the universal king, the
independent king; no one amongst the gods dares to infringe his laws;
"it is thou, Varuna, who art the king of all."
As he has omnipotence, he has omniscience too, he is "the Lord who knows
all things," the _Asura viçva-vedas_. He is the sage who has supreme
wisdom, in whom all sciences have their centre; when the poet wishes to
praise the learning of a god, he compares it to that of Varuna. "He
knows the place of the birds which fly in the air, he knows the ships
which are sailing on the ocean, he knows the twelve months and what they
will bring forth, he knows every creature that is born. He knows the
path of the sublime wind in the heights, he knows who sits at the
sacrifice. The God of stable laws, Varuna, has taken his place in his
palace to be the universal king, the god with the wondrous intellect.
Hence, following in his mind all these marvels, he looks around him at
what has happened and what will happen."
As he is the universal witness, he is also the universal judge, the
infallible judge whom nothing escapes: none can deceive him, and from
above he sees the evil done below and strikes it: he has sevenfold bands
to clasp thrice round the liar by the upper, by the middle, and by the
lower part of the body. The man, smitten by misfortune, implores his
pity, and feels that he has sinned, and that the hand which strikes is
also the hand that punishes:
"I ask Thee, O Varuna, because I wish to know my fault:
"I come to Thee, to question Thee who knowest all things. All the
sages, with one voice, said to me, Varuna is angry with thee.
"What great crime have I committed, O Varuna, that thou shouldst
want to kill thy friend, thy bard. Tell me, O Lord, O infallible
one, and I will then lay my homage at thy feet.
"Free me from the bonds of my crime, do not sever the thread of the
prayer that I am weaving, do not deliver me over to the deaths that,
at thy dictate, O Asura, strike him who has committed a crime: send
me not into the gloomy regions far from the light.
"Let me pay the penalty of my faults; but let me not suffer, O King,
for the crime of others; there are so many days that have not dawned
yet! Let them dawn for us also, O Varuna!"
Such is the supreme God of the Vedic religion, an organizing God,
almighty, omniscient, and moral. The following is a Vedic hymn which
sums up with singular force the essential attributes of the God:--
"He who from on high rules this world sees every thing as if it were
before him. That which two men, seated side by side are plotting, is
heard by king Varuna, himself the third.
"This earth belongs to the king Varuna, and this sky, these two
sublime worlds with their remote limits; the two seas[45] are the
belly of Varuna, and he rests also even in this small pool of water.
"He who should leap over the sky and beyond it, would not escape the
king Varuna: he has his spies, the spies of the heavens, who go
through the world; he has his thousand eyes which look on the earth.
"The king Varuna sees everything, all that which is between the two
worlds and beyond them: he reckons the winking of the eye of all
creatures:
"The world is in his hand like the dice in the hand of the gamester.
"Let thy sevenfold bands, O Varuna, let thy bands of wrath which are
thrice linked together, let them enfold the man with a lying tongue,
let them leave free the man with a truthful tongue!"
_Ahura Mazda._[46]--Ancient Persia opposes to Zeus, to Jupiter, to
Varuna, her Ormazd or Ahura Mazda.[47] "It is through me," he said to
his prophet, Zoroaster, "that the firmament, with its distant
boundaries, hewn from the sparkling ruby, subsists without pillars to
rest upon; it is through me that the earth, through me that the sun, the
moon, and the stars take their radiant course through the atmosphere; it
was I who formed the seeds in such a manner that, when sown in the
earth, they should grow, spring up, and appear on the surface; it was I
who traced their veins in every species of plants, who in all beings put
the fire of life which does not consume them; it is I who in the
maternal womb produce the new-born child, who form the limbs, the skin,
the nails, the blood, the feet, the ears; it was I who gave the water
feet to run; it was I who made the clouds, which carry the water to the
world," &c. This development, taken from a recent book of the Ghebers,
the Bundahish, is to be found entire, in the very first words of their
oldest and holiest book, the Avesta: "I proclaim and worship Ahura
Mazda, the _Creator_." As far as history can be traced, he was already
what he is now. Near the ruins of the ancient Ecbatana, the traveller
may read, on the red granite of the mountain of Alvand, these words,
which were engraved by the hand of Darius, the king of kings, nearly
five centuries before the birth of Christ:--
"A powerful God is Aurâmazda!
'Twas he who made this earth here below!
'Twas he who made that heaven above!
'Twas he who made man!"
This God, who made the world, rules it. He is the sovereign of the
universe, the _Ahura_,[48] "the Lord." "He is a powerful god," exclaims
Xerxes; "he is the greatest of all the gods." It is to his favour that
Darius, inscribing upon the rock of Behistun the narrative of his
nineteen victories, ascribes both his elevation and his triumphs. It is
to his supreme care that he confides Persia: "This country of Persia,
which Aurâmazda has given me, this beautiful country, beautiful in
horses, beautiful in men, by the grace of Aurâmazda, and through me,
king Darayavus, has nothing to fear from any enemy. May Aurâmazda and
the gods of the nation bring me their help! May Aurâmazda protect this
country from hostile armies, from barrenness and evil! May this country
never be invaded by the stranger, nor by hostile armies, nor by
barrenness, nor by evil! This is the favour which I implore from
Aurâmazda and the gods of the nation!"
This world which he has organized is a work of intelligence; by his
wisdom it began, and by his wisdom it will end. He is the mind which
knows all things, and it is to him that the sage appeals in order to
penetrate the mysteries of the world.
"Reveal to me the truth, O Ahura! What was the beginning of the good
creation?
"Who is the father, who, at the beginning of time, begat Order?
"Who has traced for the sun and the stars the paths that they must
follow?
"Who makes the moon increase and decrease?
"O Ahura! I would learn those mysteries and many more!
"Who has fixed the earth and the immovable stars to establish them
firmly, so that they might not fall? Who has fixed the waters and
the trees?
"Who has directed the rapid course of the wind and of the clouds?
What skilful artist has made the light and the darkness?
"What skilful workman has made sleep and wakefulness? Through whom
have we dawn, noon, and night? From whom do they learn the law which
is traced out for them? Who endeared the son to his father so that
he should train him? Those are the things that I wish to ask Thee, O
Mazda, O beneficent Spirit, O Creator of all things!"
In his omniscience are embraced all human actions. He watches over all
things, and is far-seeing, and never sleeping. He is the infallible one;
"it is impossible to deceive him, the Ahura, who knows all things." He
sees man, and judges and chastises him, if he has not followed his law,
for from him comes the law of man, as well as the law of the world; from
him comes the science supreme among all other sciences, that of duty,
the knowledge of those things we ought to think, say, and do, and of
those things we ought neither to think, nor say, nor do. To the man who
has prayed well, thought, spoken, and acted well, he opens his
resplendent paradise; he opens hell to him who has not prayed and who
has thought, spoken, and done evil.
The Supreme God, the God of Heaven.
Thus the Aryans of Greece, of Italy, of India, and of Persia agree in
giving the highest place in their Pantheon to a supreme God who rules
the world and who has founded order, a God sovereign, omniscient, and
moral. Has this identical conception been formed in each of these cases
by four independent creations, or is it a common inheritance from the
Indo-European religion, and did the Aryan ancestors of the Greeks, of
the Latins, of the Hindoos, and of the Persians already know a supreme
God, an organizing, a sovereign, an omniscient, a moral God?
Although the latter hypothesis is more simple and more probable than the
former, it cannot, however, be taken at once as certain; because an
abstract and logical conception of this kind may very well have
developed itself at the same time among several nations, in an identical
and independent manner. To whomsoever looks upon it at any time and in
any place, the world can reveal the existence of a Supreme maker:
Socrates is not the disciple of the psalmist; yet the heavens reveal to
him, as to the Hebrew poet, the glory of the Lord. But if it be found
that the abstract conception is closely connected with a naturalistic
and material conception, and that the latter is identical in the four
religions, as it is known, on the other hand, that these four religions
have a common past, the hypothesis that this abstract conception is a
heritage of this past, and not a creation of the present, may rise to a
certainty.
Now, these Gods who organize the world, rule it and watch over it; this
Zeus, this Jupiter, this Varuna, this Ahura Mazda are not the
personifications of a simple abstract conception; they emerge from a
former naturalism, from which they are not yet quite detached; they
commenced by being gods of the heavens.
Zeus and Jupiter have never ceased to be gods of the heavens, and to be
conscious of it. When the world was shared among the gods, "Zeus
received the boundless sky in the ether and the clouds for his share."
It is as the God of heaven that sometimes he shines luminous, calm, and
pure, enthroned in the ethereal splendour, and that sometimes he becomes
gloomy and gathers clouds (=nephelêgeretês=), causing the rain to fall
from heaven (=ombrios=, =hyetios=), hurling upon the earth the eddy of
fierce winds, drawing forth the hurricane from the summit of the ether,
brandishing the lightning and the thunderbolt (=keraunios=, =astrapaios=).
This is why the thunderbolt is his weapon, his attribute, "the
thunderbolt with its never-tiring foot," which he hurls in the heights;
why he rolls on a resounding chariot, brandishing in his hand the fiery
trident, or dashing it on the wings of the eagle, or on Pegasus, the
aërial steed of the lightning. This is why he is the husband of Dêmêter,
"the mother Earth," whom he impregnates with his torrents of rain; this
is why he sent forth, from his brow according to some, from his belly
according to others, from the clouds according to the Cretan legend,
Athênê, the resplendent goddess with the penetrating glance, who came
forth, shaking golden weapons, with a cry which made heaven and earth
resound, as she is the incarnation of the stormy light which breaks
forth from the brow of heaven, from the belly of heaven, from the bosom
of the cloud, filling space with its splendour and with the crash of its
stormy birth. Lastly, the very name of Zeus (genitive _Dios_, formerly
_Divos_) is, in conformity with the laws of Greek phonetics, the literal
representative of the Sanscrit Dyaus, heaven (genitive _Divas_), and the
union of =Zeus patêr= with =Dêmêtêr= is the exact counterpart of the
Vedic union of _Dyaus pitar_ with _Prithivî mâtar_, of the Heaven-Father
with Earth-Mother. The word =Zeus= is an ancient synonym of =Ouranos=,
which became obsolete as a common noun; still, in a certain number of
expressions, it retains something of its former meaning. Thus it is,
when the Earth prays Zeus to let rain fall upon her; when the Athenian
in praying exclaims: "O dear Zeus, rain thou on the field of the
Athenians and on the plains"--"Zeus has rained the whole night," says
Homer: =hye Zeus pannychos=. In all these expressions Zeus may be
literally translated as a common noun, _sky_.
Jupiter, identical with Zeus in his functions, is identical with him in
his material attributes.
The word Jûpiter, or better Jup-piter, is for Jus-piter, composed of
_pater_ and of _Jus_, the Latin contraction of the Sanscrit _Dyaus_, of
the Greek =Zeus=: Juppiter is then the exact equivalent of =Zeus patêr=,
and the word has even preserved more strongly than Zeus the sense of its
early meaning; _sub Jove_ signifies "under the heavens;" the hunter
awaits the marsian boar, heedless of the cold or snow, _sub Jove
frigido_, "under the cold Jupiter, under the cold sky." Dyaus is also in
Latin, as it is in Sanscrit, the name of the brilliant sky: "Behold,"
exclaims old Ennius, "above thy head this luminous space which all
invoke under the name of Jupiter:"
"Aspice hoc sublime candens quem invocant omnes Jovem."
Varuna, like his European brethren, has been, and is yet, a material
god, and a material god of the same kind, a god of heaven. This is why
the sun is his eye, why the sun, "the beautiful bird which flies in the
firmament," is "his golden-winged messenger;"[49] why the celestial
rivers flow in the hollow of his mouth, as in the hollow of a reed; why
everywhere visible, by turns full of light and of darkness, by turns he
infolds himself in the night, and irradiates the dawns, and by turns
clothes himself in the white garments and in the black ones. Like Zeus,
and from the same cause, he gathers together the clouds, he turns the
sack that contains the rains, and lets it loose upside down on the two
worlds; he inundates the heaven and the earth, he clothes the mountains
with a watery garb, and his blood-red eyes unceasingly furrow the watery
dwelling with their twinkling flashes. As Zeus is the father of Athênê,
he is the father of Atharvan, "the Fire-God," of Bhrigu, "the
Thunderer"--that is to say, of Agni, of the lightning. Agni himself is
brought forth "from his belly in the waters," like a male Athênê.
Finally, like Zeus, like Jupiter, he bears in his very name the
expression of what he is; and the Sanscrit Varuna is the exact phonetic
representative of =Ouranos=, sky.
In fine, the sovereign god of Persia, notwithstanding the character of
profound abstraction which he has acquired and which is reflected in his
name Ahura Mazda, "the omniscient Lord," can himself be recognized as a
god of the heavens. The ancient formulæ of the litanies still show that
he is luminous and corporeal; they invoke the creator Ahura Mazda,
resplendent, very great, very beautiful, corporeally beautiful; white,
luminous, seen from afar; they invoke the entire body of Ahura Mazda,
the body of Ahura which is the greatest of bodies; they say that the sun
is his eye, and that the sky is the garment embroidered with stars with
which he arrays himself; lastly, the most abstract of the Aryan gods has
preserved a trait which shows him more closely tied than the others to
the material world from which they have freed themselves; he is called
"the most solid of the gods," because "he has for clothing the very
solid stone of the sky." Like Varuna, like Zeus, the lightning is in his
hands, "the molten brass which he causes to flow down on the two
worlds;" like them he is the father of the god of lightning, Atar.
Lastly, the most ancient historical evidence confirms the inductions of
mythology, as at the very time when the Achæmenian kings proclaim the
sovereignty of Aurâmazda, Herodotus wrote: "The Persians offer up
sacrifices to Zeus,[50] going up on the highest summit of the mountains,
as they call _Zeus the entire orb of the sky_."
Thus the supreme gods of the four great religions of Greece, of Italy,
of India, and of Persia, are at the same time, or have begun by being
gods of the skies. By the side of these four, Svarogu, the god of the
ancient pagan Slavs, should no doubt equally be placed. Like Zeus, like
Jupiter, like Varuna, like Ahura Mazda, he is the master of the
universe, the gods are his children, and it is from him that they have
received their functions; like them he is the god of the heavens, he is
the thunderer, and like them he is the father of the Fire, Svarojitchi,
"the son of heaven."[51]