have discovered in the air, in the clouds, and, more particularly, in
those meteoric conflicts which by thunder, lightning, darkness,
storms, and showers of rain must have taught man that very important
lesson that he was not alone in this world. Many philosophers, as you
know, believe that all religion arose from fear or terror, and that
without thunder and lightning to teach us, we should never have
believed in any gods or god. This is a one-sided and exaggerated view.
Thunderstorms, no doubt, had a large share in arousing feelings of
awe and terror, and in making man conscious of his weakness and
dependence. Even in the Veda, Indra is introduced as saying: "Yes,
when I send thunder and lightning, then you believe in me." But what
we call religion would never have sprung from fear and terror alone.
_Religion is trust_, and that trust arose in the beginning from the
impressions made on the mind and heart of man by the order and wisdom
of nature, and more particularly by those regularly recurring events,
the return of the sun, the revival of the moon, the order of the
seasons, the law of cause and effect, gradually discovered in all
things, and traced back in the end to a cause of all causes, by
whatever name we choose to call it.
Still the meteoric phenomena had, no doubt, their important share in
the production of ancient deities; and in the poems of the Vedic
Rishis they naturally occupy a very prominent place. If we were asked
who was the principal god of the Vedic period, we should probably,
judging from the remains of that poetry which we possess, say it was
Indra, the god of the blue sky, the Indian Zeus, the gatherer of the
clouds, the giver of rain, the wielder of the thunder-bolt, the
conqueror of darkness, and of all the powers of darkness, the bringer
of light, the source of freshness, vigor, and life, the ruler and lord
of the whole world. Indra is this, and much more in the Veda. He is
supreme in the hymns of many poets, and may have been so in the
prayers addressed to him by many of the ancient septs or village
communities in India. Compared with him the other gods are said to be
decrepit old men. Heaven, the old Heaven or Dyaus, formerly the father
of all the gods, nay the father of Indra himself, bows before him, and
the Earth trembles at his approach. Yet Indra never commanded the
permanent allegiance of all the other gods, like Zeus and Jupiter;
nay, we know from the Veda itself that there were skeptics, even at
that early time, who denied that there was any such thing as
Indra.[223]
By the side of Indra, and associated with him in his battles, and
sometimes hardly distinguishable from him, we find the representatives
of the wind, called Vata or Vayu, and the more terrible storm-gods,
the Maruts, literally the Smashers.
When speaking of the Wind, a poet says:[224] "Where was he born?
Whence did he spring? the life of the gods, the germ of the world!
That god moves about where he listeth, his voices are heard, but he is
not to be seen."
The Maruts are more terrible than Vata, the wind. They are clearly the
representatives of such storms as are known in India, when the air is
darkened by dust and clouds, when in a moment the trees are stripped
of their foliage, their branches shivered, their stems snapped, when
the earth seems to reel and the mountains to shake, and the rivers are
lashed into foam and fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching
with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders,
brandishing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery arrows,
and cracking their whips amid thunder and lightning. They are the
comrades of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the
sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the
Howler, a fighting god, to whom many hymns are addressed. In him a new
character is evolved, that of a healer and saviour--a very natural
transition in India, where nothing is so powerful for dispelling
miasmas, restoring health, and imparting fresh vigor to man and
beast, as a thunderstorm, following after weeks of heat and drought.
All these and several others, such as Par_g_anya and the _Ri_bhus, are
the gods of mid-air, the most active and dramatic gods, ever present
to the fancy of the ancient poets, and in several cases the prototypes
of later heroes, celebrated in the epic poems of India. In battles,
more particularly, these fighting gods of the sky were constantly
invoked.[225] Indra is the leader in battles, the protector of the
bright Aryans, the destroyer of the black aboriginal inhabitants of
India. "He has thrown down fifty thousand black fellows," the poet
says, "and their strongholds crumbled away like an old rag." Strange
to say, Indra is praised for having saved his people from their
enemies, much as Jehovah was praised by the Jewish prophets. Thus we
read in one hymn that when Sudas, the pious king of the T_ri_tsus, was
pressed hard in his battle with the ten kings, Indra changed the flood
into an easy ford, and thus saved Sudas.
In another hymn we read:[226] "Thou hast restrained the great river
for the sake of Turviti Vayya: the flood moved in obedience to thee,
and thou madest the rivers easy to cross." This is not very different
from the Psalmist (78:13): "He divided the sea, and caused them to
pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap."
And there are other passages which have reminded some students of the
Veda of Joshua's battle,[227] when the sun stood still and the moon
stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
For we read in the Veda also, as Professor Kaegi has pointed out (l.
c. p. 63), that "Indra lengthened the days into the night," and that
"the Sun unharnessed its chariot in the middle of the day."[228]
In some of the hymns addressed to Indra his original connection with
the sky and the thunderstorm seems quite forgotten. He has become a
spiritual god, the only king of all worlds and all people,[229] who
sees and hears everything,[230] nay, who inspires men with their best
thoughts. No one is equal to him, no one excels him.
The name of Indra is peculiar to India, and must have been formed after
the separation of the great Aryan family had taken place, for we find it
neither in Greek, nor in Latin, nor in German. There are Vedic gods, as
I mentioned before, whose names must have been framed before that
separation, and which occur therefore, though greatly modified in
character, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Latin, sometimes in the
Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic dialects. D y a u s, for instance, is the
same word as Zeus or Jupiter, U s h a s is Eos, N a k t a is Nyx, S u r
y a is Helios, A g n i is ignis, B h a g a is Baga in Old Persian, B o g
u in Old Slavonic, V a r u _n_ a is Uranos, V a t a is Wotan, V a _k_ is
vox, and in the name of the _Maruts_, or the storm-gods, the germs of
the Italic god of war, Mars, have been discovered. Besides these direct
coincidences, some indirect relations have been established between
Hermes and S a r a m e y a, Dionysos and D y u n i _s_ y a, Prometheus
and p r a m a n t h a, Orpheus and _R i_ b h u, Erinnys and S a r a _n_
y u, Pan and P a v a n a.[231]
But while the name of Indra as the god of the sky, also as the god of
the thunderstorm, and the giver of rain, is unknown among the
north-western members of the Aryan family, the name of another god who
sometimes acts the part of Indra (Indra_h_ Par_g_anyatma), but is much
less prominent in the Veda, I mean Par_g_anya, must have existed
before that of Indra, because two at least of the Aryan languages have
carried it, as we shall see, to Germany, and to the very shores of the
Baltic.
Sometimes this Par_g_anya stands in the place of Dyaus, the sky. Thus
we read in the Atharva-Veda, XII. 1, 12:[232] "The Earth is the
mother, and I am the son of the Earth. Par_g_anya is the father; may
he help us!"
In another place (XII. 1, 42) the Earth, instead of being the wife of
Heaven or Dyaus, is called the wife of Par_g_anya.
Now who or what is this Par_g_anya? There have been long controversies
about him,[233] as to whether he is the same as Dyaus, Heaven, or the
same as Indra, the successor of Dyaus, whether he is the god of the
sky, of the cloud, or of the rain.
To me it seems that this very expression, god of the sky, god of the
cloud, is so entire an anachronism that we could not even translate it
into Vedic Sanskrit without committing a solecism. It is true, no doubt,
we must use our modern ways of speaking when we wish to represent the
thoughts of the ancient world; but we cannot be too much on our guard
against accepting the dictionary representative of an ancient word for
its real counterpart. Deva, no doubt, means "gods" and "god," and P a r
_g_ a n y a means "cloud," but no one could say in Sanskrit p a r _g_ a
n y a s y a d e v a _h_, "the god of the cloud." The god, or the divine,
or transcendental element, does not come from without, to be added to
the cloud or to the sky or to the earth, but it springs from the cloud
and the sky and the earth, and is slowly elaborated into an independent
concept. As many words in ancient languages have an undefined meaning,
and lend themselves to various purposes according to the various
intentions of the speakers, the names of the gods also share in this
elastic and plastic character of ancient speech. There are passages
where Par_g_anya means cloud, there are passages where it means rain.
There are passages where Par_g_anya takes the place which elsewhere is
filled by Dyaus, the sky, or by Indra, the active god of the atmosphere.
This may seem very wrong and very unscientific to the scientific
mythologist. But it cannot be helped. It is the nature of ancient
thought and ancient language to be unscientific, and we must learn to
master it as well as we can, instead of finding fault with it, and
complaining that our forefathers did not reason exactly as we do.
There are passages in the Vedic hymns where Par_g_anya appears as a
supreme god. He is called father, like Dyaus, the sky. He is called
a s u r a, the living or life-giving god, a name peculiar to the oldest
and the greatest gods. One poet says,[234] "He rules as god over the
whole world; all creatures rest in him; he is the life (atma) of all
that moves and rests."
Surely it is difficult to say more of a supreme god than what is here
said of Par_g_anya. Yet in other hymns he is represented as performing
his office, namely that of sending rain upon the earth, under the
control of Mitra and Varu_n_, who are then considered as the highest
lords, the mightiest rulers of heaven and earth.[235]
There are other verses, again, where par_g_anya occurs with hardly any
traces of personality, but simply as a name of cloud or rain.
Thus we read:[236] "Even by day the Maruts (the storm-gods) produce
darkness with the cloud that carries water, when they moisten the
earth." Here cloud is par_g_anya, and it is evidently used as an
appellative, and not as a proper name. The same word occurs in the
plural also, and we read of many par_g_anyas or clouds vivifying the
earth.[237]
When Devapi prays for rain in favor of his brother, he says:[238] "O
lord of my prayer (B_ri_haapati), whether thou be Mitra or Varu_n_a or
Pushan, come to my sacrifice! Whether thou be together with the
Adityas, the Vasus or the Maruts, let the cloud (par_g_anya) rain for
_S_antanu."
And again: "Stir up the rainy cloud" (par_g_anya).
In several places it makes no difference whether we translate
par_g_anya by cloud or by rain, for those who pray for rain, pray for
the cloud, and whatever may be the benefits of the rain, they may
nearly all be called the benefits of the cloud. There is a curious
hymn, for instance, addressed to the frogs who, at the beginning of
the rains, come forth from the dry ponds, and embrace each other and
chatter together, and whom the poet compares to priests singing at a
sacrifice, a not very complimentary remark from a poet who is himself
supposed to have been a priest. Their voice is said to have been
revived by par_g_anya, which we shall naturally translate "by rain,"
though, no doubt, the poet may have meant, for all we know, either a
cloud, or even the god Par_g_anya himself.
I shall try to translate one of the hymns addressed to Par_g_anya,
when conceived as a god, or at least as so much of a god as it was
possible to be at that stage in the intellectual growth of the human
race.[239]
1. "Invoke the strong god with these songs! praise
Par_g_anya, worship him with veneration! for he, the roaring
bull, scattering drops, gives seed-fruit to plants.
2. "He cuts the trees asunder, he kills evil spirits; the
whole world trembles before his mighty weapon. Even the
guiltless flees before the powerful, when Par_g_anya
thundering strikes down the evil-doers.
3. "Like a charioteer, striking his horses with a whip, he
puts forths his messenger of rain. From afar arise the
roarings of the lion, when Par_g_anya makes the sky full of
rain.
4. "The winds blow, the lightnings[240] fly, plants spring
up, the sky pours. Food is produced for the whole world,
when Par_g_anya blesses the earth with his seed.
5. "O Par_g_anya, thou at whose work the earth bows down,
thou at whose work hoofed animals are scattered, thou at
whose work the plants assume all forms, grant thou to us thy
great protection!
6. "O, Maruts, give us the rain of heaven, make the streams
of the strong horse run down! And come thou hither with thy
thunder, pouring out water, for thou (O Par_g_anya) art the
living god, thou art our father.
7. "Do thou roar, and thunder, and give fruitfulness! Fly
around us with thy chariot full of water! Draw forth thy
water-skin, when it has been opened and turned downward, and
let the high and the low places become level!
8. "Draw up the large bucket, and pour it out; let the
streams pour forth freely! Soak heaven and earth with
fatness! and let there be a good draught for the cows!
9. "O Par_g_anya, when roaring and thundering thou killest
the evil-doers, then everything rejoices, whatever lives on
earth.
10. "Thou hast sent rain, stop now! Thou hast made the
deserts passable, thou hast made plants grow for food, and
thou hast obtained praise from men."
This is a Vedic hymn, and a very fair specimen of what these ancient
hymns are. There is nothing very grand and poetical about them, and
yet, I say, take thousands and thousands of people living in our
villages, and depending on rain for their very life, and not many of
them will be able to compose such a prayer for rain, even though three
thousand years have passed over our heads since Par_g_anya was first
invoked in India. Nor are these verses entirely without poetical
conceptions and descriptions. Whoever has watched a real thunderstorm
in a hot climate will recognize the truth of those quick sentences:
"the winds blow, the lightnings fly, plants spring up, the hoofed
cattle are scattered." Nor is the idea without a certain drastic
reality, that Par_g_anya draws a bucket of water from his well in
heaven, and pours out skin after skin (in which water was then
carried) down upon the earth.
There is even a moral sentiment perceptible in this hymn. "When the
storms roar, and the lightnings flash and the rain pours down, even
the guiltless trembles, and evil-doers are struck down." Here we
clearly see that the poet did not look upon the storm simply as an
outbreak of the violence of nature, but that he had a presentiment of
a higher will and power which even the guiltless fears; for who, he
seems to say, is entirely free from guilt?
If now we ask again, Who is Par_g_anya? or What is Par_g_anya? we can
answer that par_g_anya was meant originally for the cloud, so far as
it gives rain; but as soon as the idea of a giver arose, the visible
cloud became the outward appearance only, or the body of that giver,
and the giver himself was somewhere else, we know not where. In some
verses Par_g_anya seems to step into the place of Dyaus, the sky, and
P_ri_thivi, the earth, is his wife. In other places,[241] however, he
is the son of Dyaus or the sky, though no thought is given in that
early stage to the fact that thus Par_g_anya might seem to be the
husband of his mother. We saw that even the idea of Indra being the
father of his own father did not startle the ancient poets beyond an
exclamation that it was a very wonderful thing indeed.
Sometimes Par_g_anya does the work of Indra,[242] the Jupiter Pluvius
of the Veda; sometimes of Vayu, the wind, sometimes of Soma, the giver
of rain. Yet with all this he is not Dyaus, nor Indra, nor the Maruts,
nor Vayu, nor Soma. He stands by himself, a separate person, a
separate god, as we should say--nay, one of the oldest of all the
Aryan gods.
His name, par_g_anya, is derived from a root par_g_, which, like its
parallel forms pars and parsh, must (I think) have had the meaning of
sprinkling, irrigating, moistening. An interchange between final _g_,
_s_, and sh, may, no doubt, seem unusual, but it is not without parallel
in Sanskrit. We have, for instance, the roots pi_ng_, pingere; pish, to
rub; pi_s_, to adorn (as in pe_s_as, [Greek: poikilos], etc.); m_rig_,
to rub, m_ri_sh, to rub out, to forget; m_ris_, mulcere.
This very root m_rig_ forms its participle as m_ri_sh-_t_a, like
ya_g_, ish_t_a, and vi_s_, vish_t_a; nay there are roots, such as
druh, which optionally take a final lingual or guttural, such as
dhru_t_ and dhruk.[243]
We may therefore compare par_g_ in par_g_anya with such words as
p_ri_shata, p_ri_shati, speckled, drop of water;[244] also par_s_u,
cloud, p_ris_ni, speckled, cloud, earth; and in Greek [Greek: prox(o)],
[Greek: perknos], etc.[245]
If derived from par_g_, to sprinkle, Par_g_anya would have meant
originally "he who irrigates or gives rain."[246]
When the different members of the Aryan family dispersed, they might
all of them, Hindus as well as Greeks and Celts, and Teutons and
Slaves, have carried that name for cloud with them. But you know that
it happened very often that out of the commonwealth of their ancient
language, one and the same word was preserved, as the case might be,
not by all, but by only six, or five, or four, or three, or two, or
even by one only of the seven principal heirs; and yet, as we know
that there was no historical contact between them, after they had once
parted from each other, long before the beginning of what we call
history, the fact that two of the Aryan languages have preserved the
same finished word with the same finished meaning, is proof sufficient
that it belonged to the most ancient treasure of Aryan thought.
Now there is no trace, at least no very clear trace, of Par_g_anya, in
Greek, or Latin, or Celtic, or even in Teutonic. In Slavonic, too, we
look in vain, till we come to that almost forgotten side-branch called
the _Lettic_, comprising the spoken _Lituanian_ and _Lettish_, and the
now extinct _Old Prussian_. Lituania is no longer an independent
state, but it was once, not more than six centuries ago, a Grand
Duchy, independent both of Russia and Poland. Its first Grand Duke was
Ringold, who ruled from 1235, and his successors made successful
conquests against the Russians. In 1368 these grand dukes became kings
of Poland, and in 1569 the two countries were united. When Poland was
divided between Russia and Prussia, part of Lituania fell to the
former, part to the latter. There are still about one million and a
half of people who speak Lituanian in Russia and Prussia, while
Lettish is spoken by about one million in Curland and Livonia.
The Lituanian language even as it is now spoken by the common people,
contains some extremely primitive grammatical forms--in some cases
almost identical with Sanskrit. These forms are all the more curious,
because they are but few in number, and the rest of the language has
suffered much from the wear and tear of centuries.
Now in that remote Lituanian language we find that our old friend
Par_g_anya has taken refuge. There he lives to the present day, while
even in India he is almost forgotten, at least in the spoken
languages; and there, in Lituania, not many centuries back might be
heard among a Christianized or nearly Christianized people, prayers
for rain, not very different from that which I translated to you from
the Rig-Veda. In Lituanian the god of thunder was called
_Perkunas_,[247] and the same word is still used in the sense of
thunder. In Old Prussian, thunder was _percunos_, and in Lettish to
the present day _perkons_ is thunder, god of thunder.[248]
It was, I believe, Grimm who for the first time identified the Vedic
Par_g_anya with the Old Slavonic Perun, the Polish Piorun, the
Bohemian Peraun. These words had formerly been derived by Dobrovsky
and others from the root peru, I strike. Grimm ("Teutonic Mythology,"
Engl. transl., p. 171) showed that the fuller forms Perkunas,
Pehrkons, and Perkunos existed in Lituanian, Lettish, Old Prussian,
and that even the Mordvinians had adopted the name Porguini as that of
their thunder-god.
Simon Grunau, who finished his chronicle in 1521, speaks of three
gods, as worshipped by the Old Prussians, Patollo, Patrimpo, and
Perkuno, and he states that Perkuno was invoked "for storm's sake,
that they might have rain and fair weather at the proper time, and
thunder and lightning should not injure them."[249]
The following Lituanian prayer has been preserved to us by
Lasitzki:[250]
"Check thyself, O Percuna, and do not send misfortune on my
field! and I shall give thee this flitch."
Among the neighbors of the Lets, the Esthonians, who, though un-Aryan
in language, have evidently learned much from their Aryan neighbors,
the following prayer was heard,[251] addressed by an old peasant to
their god _Picker_ or _Picken_, the god of thunder and rain, as late
as the seventeenth century.[252]
"Dear Thunder (woda Picker), we offer to thee an ox that has
two horns and four cloven hoofs; we would pray thee for our
ploughing and sowing, that our straw be copper-red, our
grain golden-yellow. Push elsewhere all the thick black
clouds, over great fens, high forests, and wildernesses. But
unto us, ploughers and sowers, give a fruitful season and
sweet rain. Holy Thunder (poeha Picken), guard our
seed-field, that it bear good straw below, good ears above,
and good grain within."[253]
Now, I say again, I do not wish you to admire this primitive poetry,
primitive, whether it is repeated in the Esthonian fens in the
seventeenth century of our era, or sung in the valley of the Indus in
the seventeenth century before our era. Let aesthetic critics say what
they like about these uncouth poems. I only ask you, Is it not worth a
great many poems, to have established this fact, that the same god
Par_g_anya, the god of clouds and thunder and lightning and rain, who
was invoked in India a thousand years before India was discovered by
Alexander, should have been remembered and believed in by Lituanian
peasants on the frontier between East Prussia and Russia, not more
than two hundred years ago, and should have retained its old name
Par_g_anya, which in Sanskrit meant "showering," under the form of
_Perkuna_, which in Lituanian is a name and a name only, without any
etymological meaning at all; nay, should live on, as some scholars
assure us, in an abbreviated form in most Slavonic dialects, namely,
in Old Slavonic as _Perun_, in Polish as _Piorun_, in Bohemian as
_Peraun_, all meaning thunder or thunderstorm?[254]
Such facts strike me as if we saw the blood suddenly beginning to flow
again through the veins of old mummies; or as if the Egyptian statues
of black granite were suddenly to begin to speak again. Touched by the
rays of modern science the old words--call them mummies or
statues--begin indeed to live again, the old names of gods and heroes
begin indeed to speak again.
All that is old becomes new, all that is new becomes old, and that one
word, Par_g_anya, seems, like a charm, to open before our eyes the
cave or cottage in which the fathers of the Aryan race, our own
fathers--whether we live on the Baltic or on the Indian Ocean--are
seen gathered together, taking refuge from the buckets of Par_g_anya,
and saying, "Stop now, Par_g_anya; thou hast sent rain; thou hast made
the deserts passable, and hast made the plants to grow; and thou hast
obtained praise from man."
* * * * *
We have still to consider the third class of gods, in addition to the
gods of the earth and the sky, namely the gods of the highest heaven,
more serene in their character than the active and fighting gods of
the air and the clouds, and more remote from the eyes of man, and
therefore more mysterious in the exercise of their power than the gods
of the earth or the air.
The principal deity is here no doubt the bright sky itself, the old
_Dyaus_, worshipped as we know by the Aryans before they broke up into
separate people and languages, and surviving in Greece as Zeus, in
Italy as Jupiter, Heaven-father, and among the Teutonic tribes as
_Tyr_ and _Tiu_. In the Veda we saw him chiefly invoked in
connection with the earth, as Dyava-p_ri_thivi, Heaven and Earth. He
is invoked by himself also, but he is a vanishing god, and his place
is taken in most of the Vedic poems by the younger and more active
god, _Indra_.