Authorities--Vedas--Brahmanas--Social condition of Vedic
India--Arts--Ranks--War--Vedic fetishism--Ancestor worship--Date
of Rig-Veda Hymns doubtful--Obscurity of the Hymns--Difficulty
of interpreting the real character of Veda--Not primitive but
sacerdotal--The moral purity not innocence but refinement.
Before examining the myths of the Aryans of India, it is necessary to
have a clear notion of the nature of the evidence from which we derive
our knowledge of the subject. That evidence is found in a large and
incongruous mass of literary documents, the heritage of the Indian
people. In this mass are extremely ancient texts (the Rig-Veda, and
the Atharva-Veda), expository comments of a date so much later that
the original meaning of the older documents was sometimes lost (the
Brahmanas), and poems and legendary collections of a period later still,
a period when the whole character of religious thought had sensibly
altered. In this literature there is indeed a certain continuity; the
names of several gods of the earliest time are preserved in the legends
of the latest. But the influences of many centuries of change, of
contending philosophies, of periods of national growth and advance, and
of national decadence and decay, have been at work on the mythology of
India. Here we have myths that were perhaps originally popular tales,
and are probably old; here again, we have later legends that certainly
were conceived in the narrow minds of a pedantic and ceremonious
priesthood. It is not possible, of course, to analyse in this place all
the myths of all the periods; we must be content to point out some which
seem to be typical examples of the working of the human intellect in
its earlier or its later childhood, in its distant hours of barbaric
beginnings, or in the senility of its sacerdotage.
The documents which contain Indian mythology may be divided, broadly
speaking, into four classes. First, and most ancient in date of
composition, are the collections of hymns known as the Vedas. Next, and
(as far as date of collection goes) far less ancient, are the expository
texts called the Brahmanas. Later still, come other manuals of devotion
and of sacred learning, called Sutras and Upanishads; and last are the
epic poems (Itihasas), and the books of legends called Puranas. We are
chiefly concerned here with the Vedas and Brahmanas. A gulf of time, a
period of social and literary change, separates the Brahmanas from the
Vedas. But the epics and Puranas differ perhaps even still more from the
Brahmanas, on account of vast religious changes which brought new gods
into the Indian Olympus, or elevated to the highest place old gods
formerly of low degree. From the composition of the first Vedic hymn to
the compilation of the latest Purana, religious and mythopoeic fancy was
never at rest.
Various motives induced various poets to assign, on various occasions
the highest powers to this or the other god. The most antique legends
were probably omitted or softened by some early Vedic bard (Rishi) of
noble genius, or again impure myths were brought from the obscurity of
oral circulation and foisted into literature by some poet less divinely
inspired. Old deities were half-forgotten, and forgotten deities were
resuscitated. Sages shook off superstitious bonds, priests forged new
fetters on ancient patterns for themselves and their flocks. Philosophy
explained away the more degrading myths; myths as degrading were
suggested to dark and servile hearts by unscientific etymologies. Over
the whole mass of ancient mythology the new mythology of a debased
Brahmanic ritualism grew like some luxurious and baneful parasite. It is
enough for our purpose if we can show that even in the purest and most
antique mythology of India the element of traditional savagery survived
and played its part, and that the irrational legends of the Vedas and
Brahmanas can often be explained as relics of savage philosophy or
faith, or as novelties planned on the ancient savage model, whether
borrowed or native to the race.
The oldest documents of Indian mythology are the Vedas, usually reckoned
as four in number. The oldest, again, of the four, is the Sanhita
("collection") of the Rig-Veda. It is a purely lyrical assortment of the
songs "which the Hindus brought with them from their ancient homes on
the banks of the Indus". In the manuscripts, the hymns are classified
according to the families of poets to whom they are ascribed. Though
composed on the banks of the Indus by sacred bards, the hymns were
compiled and arranged in India proper. At what date the oldest hymns of
which this collection is made up were first chanted it is impossible to
say with even approximate certainty. Opinions differ, or have differed,
between 2400 B.C. and 1400 B.C. as the period when the earliest sacred
lyrics of the Veda may first have been listened by gods and men. In
addition to the Rig-Veda we have the Sanhita of the Sama-Veda, "an
anthology taken from the Rik-Samhita, comprising those of its verses
which were intended to be chanted at the ceremonies of the soma
sacrifice".(1) It is conjectured that the hymns of the Sama-Veda
were borrowed from the Rig-Veda before the latter had been edited and
stereotyped into its present form. Next comes the Yajur-Veda, "which
contains the formulas for the entire sacrificial ceremonial, and indeed
forms its proper foundations," the other Vedas being devoted to the soma
sacrifice.(2) The Yajur-Veda has two divisions, known as the Black and
the White Yajur, which have common matter, but differ in arrangement.
The Black Yajur-Veda is also called the Taittirya, and it is described
as "a motley undigested jumble of different pieces".(3) Last comes
Atharva-Veda, not always regarded as a Veda properly speaking. It
derives its name from an old semi-mythical priestly family, the
Atharvans, and is full of magical formulae, imprecations, folk-lore and
spells. There are good reasons for thinking this late as a collection,
however early may be the magical ideas expressed in its contents.(4)
(1) Weber, History of Indian Literature, Eng. transl., p. 63.
(2) Ibid., p. 86.
(3) Ibid, p. 87. The name Taittirya is derived from a partridge, or from
a Rishi named Partridge in Sanskrit. There is a story that the pupils of
a sage were turned into partridges, to pick up sacred texts.
(4) Barth (Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 6) thinks that the existence of
such a collection as the Atharva-Veda is implied, perhaps, in a text of
the Rig-Veda, x. 90, 9.
Between the Vedas, or, at all events, between the oldest of the Vedas,
and the compilation of the Brahmanas, these "canonised explanations of
a canonised text,"(1) it is probable that some centuries and many social
changes intervened.(2)
(1) Whitney, Oriental and Linguistic studies, First Series, p. 4.
(2) Max Muller, Biographical Essays, p. 20. "The prose portions
presuppose the hymns, and, to judge from the utter inability of the
authors of the Brahmanas to understand the antiquated language of the
hymns, these Brahmanas must be ascribed to a much later period than that
which gave birth to the hymns."
If we would criticise the documents for Indian mythology in a scientific
manner, it is now necessary that we should try to discover, as far as
possible, the social and religious condition of the people among whom
the Vedas took shape. Were they in any sense "primitive," or were
they civilised? Was their religion in its obscure beginnings or was it
already a special and peculiar development, the fruit of many ages of
thought? Now it is an unfortunate thing that scholars have constantly,
and as it were involuntarily, drifted into the error of regarding
the Vedas as if they were "primitive," as if they exhibited to us the
"germs" and "genesis" of religion and mythology, as if they contained
the simple though strange utterances of PRIMITIVE thought.(1) Thus Mr.
Whitney declares, in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, "that the
Vedas exhibit to us the very earliest germs of the Hindu culture". Mr.
Max Muller avers that "no country can be compared to India as
offering opportunities for a real study of the genesis and growth of
religion".(2) Yet the same scholar observes that "even the earliest
specimens of Vedic poetry belong to the modern history of the race, and
that the early period of the historical growth of religion had passed
away before the Rishis (bards) could have worshipped their Devas
or bright beings with sacred hymns and invocations". Though this is
manifestly true, the sacred hymns and invocations of the Rishis are
constantly used as testimony bearing on the beginning of the historical
growth of religion. Nay, more; these remains of "the modern history of
the race" are supposed to exhibit mythology in the process of making, as
if the race had possessed no mythology before it reached a comparatively
modern period, the Vedic age. In the same spirit, Dr. Muir, the learned
editor of Sanskrit Texts, speaks in one place as if the Vedic hymns
"illustrated the natural workings of the human mind in the period of
its infancy".(3) A brief examination of the social and political and
religious condition of man, as described by the poets of the Vedas,
will prove that his infancy had long been left behind him when the first
Vedic hymns were chanted.
(1) Ibid., Rig-Veda Sanhita, p. vii.
(2) Hibbert Lectures, p. 131.
(3) Nothing can prove more absolutely and more briefly the late
character of Vedic faith than the fact that the faith had already to
be defended against the attacks of sceptics. The impious denied the
existence of Indra because he was invisible. Rig-Veda, ii. 12, 5; viii.
89, 3; v. 30, 1-2; vi. 27, 3. Bergaigne, ii. 167. "Es gibt keinen Indra,
so hat der eine und der ander gesagt" (Ludwig's version).
As Barth observes, the very ideas which permeate the Veda, the idea of
the mystic efficacy of sacrifice, of brahma, prove that the poems are
profoundly sacerdotal; and this should have given pause to the writers
who have persisted in representing the hymns as the work of primitive
shepherds praising their gods as they feed their flocks.(1) In the Vedic
age the ranks of society are already at least as clearly defined as in
Homeric Greece. "We men," says a poet of the Rig-Veda,(2) "have all our
different imaginations and designs. The carpenter seeks something that
is broken, the doctor a patient, the priest some one who will offer
libations.... The artisan continually seeks after a man with plenty of
gold.... I am a poet, my father is a doctor, and my mother is a grinder
of corn." Chariots and the art of the chariot-builder are as frequently
spoken of as in the Iliad. Spears, swords, axes and coats of mail were
in common use. The art of boat-building or of ship-building was well
known. Kine and horses, sheep and dogs, had long been domesticated. The
bow was a favourite weapon, and warriors fought in chariots, like the
Homeric Greeks and the Egyptians. Weaving was commonly practised. The
people probably lived, as a rule, in village settlements, but cities or
fortified places were by no means unknown.(3) As for political society,
"kings are frequently mentioned in the hymns," and "it was regarded as
eminently beneficial for a king to entertain a family priest," on whom
he was expected to confer thousands of kine, lovely slaves and lumps of
gold. In the family polygamy existed, probably as the exception. There
is reason to suppose that the brother-in-law was permitted, if
not expected, to "raise up seed" to his dead brother, as among the
Hebrews.(4) As to literature, the very structure of the hymns proves
that it was elaborate and consciously artistic. M. Barth writes: "It
would be a great mistake to speak of the primitive naivete of the Vedic
poetry and religion".(5) Both the poetry and the religion, on the other
hand, display in the highest degree the mark of the sacerdotal spirit.
The myths, though originally derived from nature-worship, in an infinite
majority of cases only reflect natural phenomena through a veil of
ritualistic corruptions.(6) The rigid division of castes is seldom
recognised in the Rig-Veda. We seem to see caste in the making.(7)
The Rishis and priests of the princely families were on their way to
becoming the all-powerful Brahmans. The kings and princes were on their
way to becoming the caste of Kshatriyas or warriors. The mass of the
people was soon to sink into the caste of Vaisyas and broken men.
Non-Aryan aborigines and others were possibly developing into the caste
of Sudras. Thus the spirit of division and of ceremonialism had still
some of its conquests to achieve. But the extraordinary attention given
and the immense importance assigned to the details of sacrifice, and
the supernatural efficacy constantly attributed to a sort of magical
asceticism (tapas, austere fervour), prove that the worst and most
foolish elements of later Indian society and thought were in the Vedic
age already in powerful existence.
(1) Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 27.
(2) ix. 112.
(3) Ludwig, Rig-Veda, iii. 203. The burgs were fortified with wooden
palisades, capable of being destroyed by fire. "Cities" may be too
magnificent a word for what perhaps were more like pahs. But compare
Kaegi, The Rig-Veda, note 42, Engl. transl. Kaegi's book (translated by
Dr. Arrowsmith, Boston, U.S., 1886) is probably the best short manual of
the subject.
(4) Deut. xxv. 5; Matt. xxii. 24.
(5) Revue de l'Histoire des Religions, i. 245.
(6) Ludwig, iii. 262.
(7) On this subject see Muir, i. 192, with the remarks of Haug. "From
all we know, the real origin of caste seems to go back to a time
anterior to the composition of the Vedic hymns, though its development
into a regular system with insurmountable barriers can be referred only
to the later period of the Vedic times." Roth approaches the subject
from the word brahm, that is, prayer with a mystical efficacy, as his
starting-point. From brahm, prayer, came brahma, he who pronounces the
prayers and performs the rite. This celebrant developed into a priest,
whom to entertain brought blessings on kings. This domestic chaplaincy
(conferring peculiar and even supernatural benefits) became hereditary
in families, and these, united by common interests, exalted themselves
into the Brahman caste. But in the Vedic age gifts of prayer and poetry
alone marked out the purohitas, or men put forward to mediate between
gods and mortals. Compare Ludwig, iii. 221.
Thus it is self-evident that the society in which the Vedic poets lived
was so far from being PRIMITIVE that it was even superior to the higher
barbarisms (such as that of the Scythians of Herodotus and Germans of
Tacitus), and might be regarded as safely arrived at the threshold of
civilisation. Society possessed kings, though they may have been kings
of small communities, like those who warred with Joshua or fought under
the walls of Thebes or Troy. Poets were better paid than they seem to
have been at the courts of Homer or are at the present time. For the
tribal festivals special priests were appointed, "who distinguished
themselves by their comprehensive knowledge of the requisite rites
and by their learning, and amongst whom a sort of rivalry is gradually
developed, according as one tribe or another is supposed to have more or
less prospered by its sacrifices".(1) In the family marriage is sacred,
and traces of polyandry and of the levirate, surviving as late as the
epic poems, were regarded as things that need to be explained away.
Perhaps the most barbaric feature in Vedic society, the most singular
relic of a distant past, is the survival, even in a modified and
symbolic form, of human sacrifice.(2)
(1) Weber, p. 37.
(2) Wilson, Rig-Veda, i. p. 59-63; Muir, i. ii.; Wilson, Rig-Veda i. p.
xxiv., ii. 8 (ii. 90); Aitareya Brahmana, Haug's version, vol. ii. pp.
462, 469.
As to the religious condition of the Vedic Aryans, we must steadily
remember that in the Vedas we have the views of the Rishis only, that
is, of sacred poets on their way to becoming a sacred caste. Necessarily
they no more represent the POPULAR creeds than the psalmists and
prophets, with their lofty monotheistic morality, represent the popular
creeds of Israel. The faith of the Rishis, as will be shown later, like
that of the psalmists, has a noble moral aspect. Yet certain elements of
this higher creed are already found in the faiths of the lowest savages.
The Rishis probably did not actually INVENT them. Consciousness of sin,
of imperfection in the sight of divine beings, has been developed (as
it has even in Australia) and is often confessed. But on the whole
the religion of the Rishis is practical--it might almost be said, is
magical. They desire temporal blessings, rain, sunshine, long life,
power, wealth in flocks and herds. The whole purpose of the sacrifices
which occupy so much of their time and thought is to obtain these good
things. The sacrifice and the sacrificer come between gods and men. On
the man's side is faith, munificence, a compelling force of prayer and
of intentness of will. The sacrifice invigorates the gods to do the will
of the sacrificer; it is supposed to be mystically celebrated in heaven
as well as on earth--the gods are always sacrificing. Often (as when
rain is wanted) the sacrifice imitates the end which it is desirable to
gain.(1) In all these matters a minute ritual is already observed. The
mystic word brahma, in the sense of hymn or prayer of a compelling and
magical efficacy, has already come into use. The brahma answers
almost to the Maori karakia or incantation and charm. "This brahma of
Visvamitra protects the tribe of Bharata." "Atri with the fourth prayer
discovered the sun concealed by unholy darkness."(2) The complicated
ritual, in which prayer and sacrifice were supposed to exert a
constraining influence on the supernatural powers, already existed, Haug
thinks, in the time of the chief Rishis or hymnists of the Rig-Veda.(3)
(1) Compare "The Prayers of Savages" in J. A. Farrer's Primitive
Manners, and Ludwig, iii. 262-296, and see Bergaigne, La Religion
Vedique, vol. i. p. 121.
(2) See texts in Muir, i. 242.
(3) Preface to translation of Aitareya Brahmana, p. 36.
In many respects the nature of the idea of the divine, as entertained
by the Rishis of the Rig-Veda, is still matter for discussion. In the
chapter on Vedic gods such particulars as can be ascertained will be
given. Roughly speaking, the religion is mainly, though not wholly,
a cult of departmental gods, originally, in certain cases, forces of
Nature, but endowed with moral earnestness. As to fetishism in the Vedas
the opinions of the learned are divided. M. Bergaigne(1) looks on
the whole ritual as, practically, an organised fetishism, employed
to influence gods of a far higher and purer character. Mr. Max Muller
remarks, "that stones, bones, shells, herbs and all the other so-called
fetishes, are simply absent in the old hymns, though they appear in more
modern hymns, particularly those of the Atharva-Veda. When artificial
objects are mentioned and celebrated in the Rig-Veda, they are only
such as might be praised even by Wordsworth or Tennyson--chariots, bows,
quivers, axes, drums, sacrificial vessels and similar objects. They
never assume any individual character; they are simply mentioned as
useful or precious, it may be as sacred."(2)
(1) La Religion Vedique, vol. i. p. 123. "Le culte est assimilable dans
une certaine mesure aux incantations, aux pratiques magiques."
(2) Hibbert Lectures, p. 198.
When the existence of fetish "herbs" is denied by Mr. Max Muller, he
does not, of course, forget Soma, that divine juice. It is also to be
noted that in modern India, as Mr. Max Muller himself observes, Sir
Alfred Lyall finds that "the husbandman prays to his plough and the
fisher to his net," these objects being, at present, fetishes. In
opposition to Mr. Max Muller, Barth avers that the same kind of
fetishism which flourishes to-day flourishes in the Rig-Veda.
"Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, herbs are invoked as so many powers.
The beasts which live with man--the horse, the cow, the dog, the bird
and the animals which imperil his existence--receive a cult of praise
and prayer. Among the instruments of ritual, some objects are more
than things consecrated--they are divinities; and the war-chariot, the
weapons of defence and offence, the plough, are the objects not only
of benedictions but of prayers."(1) These absolute contradictions on
matters of fact add, of course, to the difficulty of understanding the
early Indo-Aryan religion. One authority says that the Vedic people were
fetish-worshippers; another authority denies it.
(1) Barth, Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 7, with the Vedic texts.
Were the Rishis ancestor-worshippers? Barth has no doubt whatever that
they were. In the pitris or fathers he recognises ancestral spirits, now
"companions of the gods, and gods themselves. At their head appear the
earliest celebrants of the sacrifice, Atharvan, the Angiras, the Kavis
(the pitris, par excellence) equals of the greatest gods, spirits who,
BY DINT OF SACRIFICE, drew forth the world from chaos, gave birth to the
sun and lighted the stars,"--cosmical feats which, as we have seen,
are sometimes attributed by the lower races to their idealised mythic
ancestors, the "old, old ones" of Australians and Ovahereroes.
A few examples of invocations of the ancestral spirits may not be out
of place.(1) "May the Fathers protect me in my invocation of the gods."
Here is a curious case, especially when we remember how the wolf, in
the North American myth, scattered the stars like spangles over the sky:
"The fathers have adorned the sky with stars".(2)
(1) Rig-Veda, vi. 52,4.
(2) Ibid., x. 68, xi.
Mr. Whitney (Oriental and Linguistic Studies, First Series, p. 59) gives
examples of the ceremony of feeding the Aryan ghosts. "The fathers are
supposed to assemble, upon due invocation, about the altar of him who
would pay them homage, to seat themselves upon the straw or matting
spread for each of the guests invited, and to partake of the offerings
set before them." The food seems chiefly to consist of rice, sesame and
honey.
Important as is the element of ancestor-worship in the evolution of
religion, Mr. Max Muller, in his Hibbert Lectures, merely remarks that
thoughts and feelings about the dead "supplied some of the earliest and
most important elements of religion"; but how these earliest elements
affect his system does not appear. On a general view, then, the
religion of the Vedic poets contained a vast number of elements in
solution--elements such as meet us in every quarter of the globe. The
belief in ancestral ghosts, the adoration of fetishes, the devotion to
a moral ideal, contemplated in the persons of various deities, some of
whom at least have been, and partly remain, personal natural forces, are
all mingled, and all are drifting towards a kind of pantheism, in which,
while everything is divine, and gods are reckoned by millions, the
worshipper has glimpses of one single divine essence. The ritual, as we
have seen, is more or less magical in character. The general elements
of the beliefs are found, in various proportions, everywhere; the
pantheistic mysticism is almost peculiar to India. It is, perhaps,
needless to repeat that a faith so very composite, and already so
strongly differentiated, cannot possibly be "primitive," and that the
beliefs and practices of a race so highly organised in society and
so well equipped in material civilisation as the Vedic Aryans cannot
possibly be "near the beginning". Far from expecting to find in the
Veda the primitive myths of the Aryans, we must remember that myth had
already, when these hymns were sung, become obnoxious to the religious
sentiment. "Thus," writes Barth, "the authors of the hymns have
expurgated, or at least left in the shade, a vast number of legends
older than their time; such, for example, as the identity of soma with
the moon, as the account of the divine families, of the parricide of
Indra, and a long list might be made of the reticences of the Veda....
It would be difficult to extract from the hymns a chapter on the loves
of the gods. The goddesses are veiled, the adventures of the gods are
scarcely touched on in passing.... We must allow for the moral delicacy
of the singers, and for their dislike of speaking too precisely about
the gods. Sometimes it seems as if their chief object was to avoid plain
speaking.... But often there is nothing save jargon and indolence of
mind in this voluntary obscurity, for already in the Veda the Indian
intellect is deeply smitten with its inveterate malady of affecting
mystery the more, the more it has nothing to conceal; the mania for
scattering symbols which symbolise no reality, and for sporting with
riddles which it is not worth while to divine."(1) Barth, however, also
recognises amidst these confusions, "the inquietude of a heart deeply
stirred, which seeks truth and redemption in prayer". Such is the
natural judgment of the clear French intellect on the wilfully obscure,
tormented and evasive intellect of India.
(1) Les Religions de l'Inde, p. 21.
It would be interesting were it possible to illuminate the criticism of
Vedic religion by ascertaining which hymns in the Rig-Veda are the most
ancient, and which are later. Could we do this, we might draw inferences
as to the comparative antiquity of the religious ideas in the poems.
But no such discrimination of relative antiquity seems to be within
the reach of critics. M. Bergaigne thinks it impossible at present to
determine the relative age of the hymns by any philological test. The
ideas expressed are not more easily arrayed in order of date. We might
think that the poems which contain most ceremonial allusions were the
latest. But Mr. Max Muller says that "even the earliest hymns have
sentiments worthy of the most advanced ceremonialists".(1)
(1) History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 556.
The first and oldest source of our knowledge of Indo-Aryan myths is the
Rig-Veda, whose nature and character have been described. The second
source is the Atharva-Veda with the Brahmanas. The peculiarity of the
Atharva is its collection of magical incantations spells and fragments
of folklore. These are often, doubtless, of the highest antiquity.
Sorcery and the arts of medicine-men are earlier in the course of
evolution than priesthood. We meet them everywhere among races who have
not developed the institution of an order of priests serving national
gods. As a collection, the Atharva-Veda is later than the Rig-Veda,
but we need not therefore conclude that the IDEAS of the Atharva are "a
later development of the more primitive ideas of the Rig-Veda". Magic is
quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus; the ideas of the Atharva-Veda
are everywhere; the peculiar notions of the Rig-Veda are the special
property of an advanced and highly differentiated people. Even in the
present collected shape, M. Barth thinks that many hymns of the Atharva
are not much later than those of the Rig-Veda. Mr. Whitney, admitting
the lateness of the Atharva as a collection, says, "This would not
necessarily imply that the main body of the Atharva hymns were
not already in existence when the compilation of the Rig-Veda took
place".(1) The Atharva refers to some poets of the Rig (as certain
hymnists in the Rig also do) as earlier men. If in the Rig (as Weber
says) "there breathes a lively natural feeling, a warm love of nature,
while in the Atharva, on the contrary, there predominates an anxious
apprehension of evil spirits and their magical powers," it by no means
follows that this apprehension is of later origin than the lively
feeling for Nature. Rather the reverse. There appears to be no doubt(2)
that the style and language of the Atharva are later than those of
the Rig. Roth, who recognises the change, in language and style, yet
considers the Atharva "part of the old literature".(3) He concludes that
the Atharva contains many pieces which, "both by their style and ideas,
are shown to be contemporary with the older hymns of the Rig-Veda".
In religion, according to Muir,(4) the Atharva shows progress in the
direction of monotheism in its celebration of Brahman, but it also
introduces serpent-worship.
(1) Journal of the American Oriental Society. iv. 253.
(2) Muir, ii. 446.
(3) Ibid., ii. 448.
(4) Ibid., ii. 451.
As to the Atharva, then, we are free to suppose, if we like, that the
dark magic, the evil spirits, the incantations, are old parts of Indian,
as of all other popular beliefs, though they come later into literature
than the poetry about Ushas and the morality of Varuna. The same remarks
apply to our third source of information, the Brahmanas. These are
indubitably comments on the sacred texts very much more modern in form
than the texts themselves. But it does not follow, and this is most
important for our purpose, that the myths in the Brahmanas are all later
than the Vedic myths or corruptions of the Veda. Muir remarks,(1) "The
Rig-Veda, though the oldest collection, does not necessarily contain
everything that is of the greatest age in Indian thought or tradition.
We know, for example, that certain legends, bearing the impress of
the highest antiquity, such as that of the deluge, appear first in the
Brahmanas." We are especially interested in this criticism, because most
of the myths which we profess to explain as survivals of savagery are
narrated in the Brahmanas. If these are necessarily late corruptions of
Vedic ideas, because the collection of the Brahmanas is far more modern
than that of the Veda, our argument is instantly disproved. But if ideas
of an earlier stratum of thought than the Vedic stratum may appear in
a later collection, as ideas of an earlier stratum of thought than
the Homeric appear in poetry and prose far later than Homer, then our
contention is legitimate. It will be shown in effect that a number of
myths of the Brahmanas correspond in character and incident with the
myths of savages, such as Cahrocs and Ahts. Our explanation is, that
these tales partly survived, in the minds perhaps of conservative local
priesthoods, from the savage stage of thought, or were borrowed from
aborigines in that stage, or were moulded in more recent times on
surviving examples of that wild early fancy.
(1) Muir, iv. 450.
In the age of the Brahmanas the people have spread southwards from the
basin of the Indus to that of the Ganges. The old sacred texts have
begun to be scarcely comprehensible. The priesthood has become much more
strictly defined and more rigorously constituted. Absurd as it may seem,
the Vedic metres, like the Gayatri, have been personified, and appear as
active heroines of stories presumably older than this personification.
The Asuras have descended from the rank of gods to that of the heavenly
opposition to Indra's government; they are now a kind of fiends, and the
Brahmanas are occupied with long stories about the war in heaven,
itself a very ancient conception. Varuna becomes cruel on occasion, and
hostile. Prajapati becomes the great mythical hero, and inherits the
wildest myths of the savage heroic beasts and birds.
The priests are now Brahmans, a hereditary divine caste, who possess all
the vast and puerile knowledge of ritual and sacrificial minutiae. As
life in the opera is a series of songs, so life in the Brahmanas is a
sequence of sacrifices. Sacrifice makes the sun rise and set, and the
rivers run this way or that.
The study of Indian myth is obstructed, as has been shown, by the
difficulty of determining the relative dates of the various legends, but
there are a myriad of other obstacles to the study of Indian mythology.
A poet of the Vedas says, "The chanters of hymns go about enveloped in
mist, and unsatisfied with idle talk".(1) The ancient hymns are still
"enveloped in mist," owing to the difficulty of their language and the
variety of modern renderings and interpretations. The heretics of
Vedic religion, the opponents of the orthodox commentators in ages
comparatively recent, used to complain that the Vedas were simply
nonsense, and their authors "knaves and buffoons". There are moments
when the modern student of Vedic myths is inclined to echo this petulant
complaint. For example, it is difficult enough to find in the Rig-Veda
anything like a categoric account of the gods, and a description of
their personal appearance. But in Rig-Veda, viii. 29, 1, we read of one
god, "a youth, brown, now hostile, now friendly; a golden lustre
invests him". Who is this youth? "Soma as the moon," according to the
commentators. M. Langlois thinks the sun is meant. Dr. Aufrecht thinks
the troop of Maruts (spirits of the storm), to whom, he remarks, the
epithet "dark-brown, tawny" is as applicable as it is to their master,
Rudra. This is rather confusing, and a mythological inquirer would like
to know for certain whether he is reading about the sun or soma, the
moon, or the winds.
(1) Rig-Veda, x. 82, 7, but compare Bergaigne, op. cit., iii. 72,
"enveloppes de nuees et de murmures".
To take another example; we open Mr. Max Muller's translation of the
Rig-Veda at random, say at page 49. In the second verse of the hymn
to the Maruts, Mr. Muller translates, "They who were born together,
self-luminous, with the spotted deer (the clouds), the spears, the
daggers, the glittering ornaments. I hear their whips almost close by,
as they crack them in their hands; they gain splendour on their way."
Now Wilson translates this passage, "Who, borne by spotted deer, were
born self-luminous, with weapons, war-cries and decorations. I hear the
cracking of their whips in their hands, wonderfully inspiring courage in
the fight." Benfey has, "Who with stags and spears, and with thunder and
lightning, self-luminous, were born. Hard by rings the crack of their
whip as it sounds in their hands; bright fare they down in storm."
Langlois translates, "Just born are they, self-luminous. Mark ye their
arms, their decorations, their car drawn by deer? Hear ye their clamour?
Listen! 'tis the noise of the whip they hold in their hands, the sound
that stirs up courage in the battle." This is an ordinary example of the
diversities of Vedic translation. It is sufficiently puzzling, nor is
the matter made more transparent by the variety of opinion as to the
meaning of the "deer" along with which the Maruts are said (by some of
the translators) to have been born. This is just the sort of passage
on which a controversy affecting the whole nature of Vedic mythological
ideas might be raised. According to a text in the Yajur Veda, gods, and
men, and beasts, and other matters were created from various portions of
the frame of a divine being named Prajapati.(1) The god Agni, Brahmans
and the goat were born from the mouth of Prajapati. From his breast and
arms came the god Indra (sometimes spoken of as a ram), the sheep, and
of men the Rajanya. Cows and gods called Visvadevas were born together
from his middle. Are we to understand the words "they who were born
together with the spotted deer" to refer to a myth of this kind--a myth
representing the Maruts and deer as having been born at the same birth,
as Agni came with the goat, and Indra with the sheep? This is just the
point on which the Indian commentators were divided.(2) Sayana, the old
commentator, says, "The legendary school takes them for deer with white
spots; the etymological school, for the many-coloured lines of
clouds". The modern legendary (or anthropological) and etymological (or
philological) students of mythology are often as much at variance in
their attempts to interpret the traditions of India.
(1) Muir, Sanskrit Texts, 2nd edit., i. 16.
(2) Max Muller, Rig-Veda Sanhita, trans., vol. i. p. 59.
Another famous, and almost comic, example of the difficulty of Vedic
interpretation is well known. In Rig-Veda, x. 16, 4, there is a funeral
hymn. Agni, the fire-god, is supplicated either to roast a goat or to
warm the soul of the dead and convey it to paradise. Whether the soul
is to be thus comforted or the goat is to be grilled, is a question that
has mightily puzzled Vedic doctors.(1) Professor Muller and M. Langlois
are all for "the immortal soul", the goat has advocates, or had
advocates, in Aufrecht, Ludwig and Roth. More important difficulties
of interpretation are illustrated by the attitude of M. Bergaigne in
La Religion Vedique, and his controversy with the great German
lexicographers. The study of mythology at one time made the Vedas its
starting-point. But perhaps it would be wise to begin from something
more intelligible, something less perplexed by difficulties of language
and diversities of interpretation.
(1) Muir, v. 217.
In attempting to criticise the various Aryan myths, we shall be guided,
on the whole, by the character of the myths themselves. Pure and
elevated conceptions we shall be inclined to assign to a pure and
elevated condition of thought (though such conceptions do, recognisably,
occur in the lowest known religious strata), and we shall make no
difficulty about believing that Rishis and singers capable of noble
conceptions existed in an age very remote in time, in a society which
had many of the features of a lofty and simple civilisation. But we
shall not, therefore, assume that the hymns of these Rishis are in any
sense "primitive," or throw much light on the infancy of the human mind,
or on the "origin" of religious and heroic myths. Impure, childish
and barbaric conceptions, on the other hand, we shall be inclined to
attribute to an impure, childish, and barbaric condition of thought; and
we shall again make no difficulty about believing that ideas originally
conceived when that stage of thought was general have been retained and
handed down to a far later period. This view of the possible, or rather
probable, antiquity of many of the myths preserved in the Brahmanas
is strengthened, if it needed strengthening, by the opinion of Dr.
Weber.(1) "We must indeed assume generally with regard to many of those
legends (in the Brahmanas of the Rig-Veda) that they had already gained
a rounded independent shape in tradition before they were incorporated
into the Brahmanas; and of this we have frequent evidence in the
DISTINCTLY ARCHAIC CHARACTER OF THEIR LANGUAGE, compared with that of
the rest of the text."
(1) History of Indian Literature, English trans., p. 47.
We have now briefly stated the nature and probable relative antiquity of
the evidence which is at the disposal of Vedic mythologists. The chief
lesson we would enforce is the necessity of suspending the judgment when
the Vedas are represented as examples of primitive and comparatively
pure and simple natural religion. They are not primitive; they are
highly differentiated, highly complex, extremely enigmatic expressions
of fairly advanced and very peculiar religious thought. They are not
morally so very pure as has been maintained, and their purity, such as
it is, seems the result of conscious reticence and wary selection rather
than of primeval innocence. Yet the bards or editors have by no means
wholly excluded very ancient myths of a thoroughly savage character.
These will be chiefly exposed in the chapter on "Indo-Aryan Myths of the
Beginnings of Things," which follows.