and shielding all things, is Varu_n_a, a name derived from the root
var, to cover, and identical with the Greek _Ouranos_. This god is one
of the most interesting creations of the Hindu mind, because though
we can still perceive the physical background from which he rises, the
vast, starry, brilliant expanse above, his features, more than those
of any of the Vedic gods, have become completely transfigured, and he
stands before us as a god who watches over the world, punishes the
evil-doer, and even forgives the sins of those who implore his pardon.
I shall read you one of the hymns addressed to him:[255]
"Let us be blessed in thy service, O Varu_n_a, for we always
think of thee and praise thee, greeting thee day by day,
like the fires lighted on the altar, at the approach of the
rich dawns." 2.
"O Varu_n_a, our guide, let us stand in thy keeping, thou
who art rich in heroes and praised far and wide! And you,
unconquered sons of Aditi, deign to accept us as your
friends, O gods!" 3.
"Aditya, the ruler, sent forth these rivers; they follow the
law of Varu_n_a. They tire not, they cease not; like birds
they fly quickly everywhere." 4.
"Take from me my sin, like a fetter, and we shall increase,
O Varu_n_a, the spring of thy law. Let not the thread be cut
while I weave my song! Let not the form of the workman break
before the time! 5.
"Take far away from me this terror, O Varu_n_a; Thou, O
righteous king, have mercy on me! Like as a rope from a
calf, remove from me my sin; for away from thee I am not
master even of the twinkling of an eye." 6.
"Do not strike us, Varu_n_a, with weapons which at thy will
hurt the evil-doer. Let us not go where the light has
vanished! Scatter our enemies, that we may live." 7.
"We did formerly, O Varu_n_a, and do now, and shall in
future also, sing praises to thee, O mighty one! For on
thee, unconquerable hero, rest all statutes, immovable, as
if established on a rock." 8.
"Move far away from me all self-committed guilt, and may I
not, O king, suffer for what others have committed! Many
dawns have not yet dawned; grant us to live in them, O
Varu_n_a." 9.
You may have observed that in several verses of this hymn Varu_n_a was
called Aditya, or son of Aditi. Now Aditi means _infinitude_, from
_dita_, bound, and _a_, not, that is, not bound, not limited,
absolute, infinite. Aditi itself is now and then invoked in the Veda,
as the Beyond, as what is beyond the earth and the sky, and the sun
and the dawn--a most surprising conception in that early period of
religious thought. More frequently, however, than Aditi, we meet with
the Adityas, literally the sons of Aditi, or the gods beyond the
visible earth and sky--in one sense, the infinite gods. One of them is
Varu_n_a, others Mitra and Aryaman (Bhaga, Daksha, A_ms_a), most of
them abstract names, though pointing to heaven and the solar light of
heaven as their first, though almost forgotten source.
When Mitra and Varu_n_a are invoked together, we can still perceive
dimly that they were meant originally for day and night, light and
darkness. But in their more personal and so to say dramatic aspect,
day and night appear in the Vedic mythology as the two A_s_vins, the
two horsemen.
Aditi, too, the infinite, still shows a few traces of her being
originally connected with the boundless Dawn; but again, in her more
personal and dramatic character, the Dawn is praised by the Vedic
poets as Ushas, the Greek Eos, the beautiful maid of the morning,
loved by the A_s_vins, loved by the sun, but vanishing before him at
the very moment when he tries to embrace her with his golden rays. The
sun himself, whom we saw reflected several times before in some of the
divine personifications of the air and the sky and even of the earth,
appears once more in his full personality, as the sun of the sky,
under the names of Surya (Helios), Savit_ri_, Pushan, and Vish_n_u,
and many more.
You see from all this how great a mistake it would be to attempt to
reduce the whole of Aryan mythology to solar concepts, and to solar
concepts only. We have seen how largely the earth, the air, and the
sky have each contributed their share to the earliest religious and
mythological treasury of the Vedic Aryans. Nevertheless, the Sun
occupied in that ancient collection of Aryan thought, which we call
Mythology, the same central and commanding position which, under
different names, it still holds in our own thoughts.
What we call the Morning, the ancient Aryans called the Sun or the
Dawn; "and there is no solemnity so deep to a rightly-thinking
creature as that of the Dawn." (These are not my words, but the words
of one of our greatest poets, one of the truest worshippers of
Nature--John Ruskin.) What we call Noon, and Evening, and Night, what
we call Spring and Winter, what we call Year, and Time, and Life, and
Eternity--all this the ancient Aryans called _Sun_. And yet wise
people wonder and say, How curious that the ancient Aryans should have
had so many solar myths. Why, every time we say "Good-morning," we
commit a solar myth. Every poet who sings about "the May driving the
Winter from the field again" commits a solar myth. Every "Christmas
number" of our newspapers--ringing out the old year and ringing in the
new--is brimful of solar myths. Be not afraid of solar myths, but
whenever in ancient mythology you meet with a name that, according to
the strictest phonetic rules (for this is a _sine qua non_), can be
traced back to a word meaning sun, or dawn, or morning, or night, or
spring or winter, accept it for what it was meant to be, and do not be
greatly surprised, if a story told of a solar eponymos was originally
a solar myth.
No one has more strongly protested against the extravagances of
comparative mythologists in changing everything into solar legends,
than I have; but if I read some of the arguments brought forward
against this new science, I confess they remind me of nothing so much
as of the arguments brought forward, centuries ago, against the
existence of Antipodes! People then appealed to what is called Common
Sense, which ought to teach everybody that Antipodes could not
possibly exist, because they would tumble off. The best answer that
astronomers could give, was, "Go and see." And I can give no better
answer to those learned skeptics who try to ridicule the Science of
Comparative Mythology--"Go and see!" that is, go and read the Veda,
and before you have finished the first Ma_nd_ala, I can promise you,
you will no longer shake your wise heads at solar myths, whether in
India, or in Greece, or in Italy, or even in England, where we see so
little of the sun, and talk all the more about the weather--that is,
about a solar myth.
We have thus seen from the hymns and prayers preserved to us in the
Rig-Veda, how a large number of so-called Devas, bright and sunny
beings, or gods, were called into existence, how the whole world was
peopled with them, and every act of nature, whether on the earth or in
the air or in the highest heaven, ascribed to their agency. When we
say _it_ thunders, they said Indra thunders; when we say, _it_ rains,
they said Par_g_anya pours out his buckets; when we say, _it_ dawns,
they said the beautiful Ushas appears like a dancer, displaying her
splendor; when we say; _it_ grows dark, they said Surya unharnesses
his steeds. The whole of nature was alive to the poets of the Veda,
the presence of the gods was felt everywhere, and in that sentiment of
the presence of the gods there was a germ of religious morality,
sufficiently strong, it would seem, to restrain people from committing
as it were before the eyes of their gods what they were ashamed to
commit before the eyes of men. When speaking of Varu_n_a, the old god
of the sky, one poet says:[256]
"Varu_n_a, the great lord of these worlds, sees as if he were
near. If a man stands or walks or hides, if he goes to lie
down or to get up, what two people sitting together whisper
to each other, King Varu_n_a knows it, he is there as the
third.[257] This earth too belongs to Varu_n_a, the King, and
this wide sky with its ends far apart. The two seas (the sky
and the ocean) are Varu_n_a's loins; he is also contained in
this small drop of water. He who should flee far beyond the
sky, even he would not be rid of Varu_n_a, the King.[258] His
spies proceed from heaven toward this world; with thousand
eyes they overlook this earth. King Varu_n_a sees all this,
what is between heaven and earth, and what is beyond. He has
counted the twinklings of the eyes of men. As a player throws
down the dice, he settles all things (irrevocably). May all
thy fatal snares which stand spread out seven by seven and
threefold, catch the man who tells a lie, may they pass by
him who speaks the truth."
You see this is as beautiful, and in some respects as true, as
anything in the Psalms. And yet we know that there never was such a
Deva, or god, or such a thing as Varu_n_a. We know it is a mere name,
meaning originally "covering or all-embracing," which was applied to
the visible starry sky, and afterward, by a process perfectly
intelligible, developed into the name of a Being, endowed with human
and superhuman qualities.
And what applies to Varu_n_a applies to all the other gods of the Veda
and the Vedic religion, whether three in number, or thirty-three, or,
as one poet said, "three thousand three hundred and thirty-nine
gods."[259] They are all but names, quite as much as Jupiter and
Apollo and Minerva; in fact, quite as much as all the gods of every
religion who are called by such appellative titles.
Possibly, if any one had said this during the Vedic age in India, or
even during the Periklean age in Greece, he would have been called,
like Sokrates, a blasphemer or an atheist. And yet nothing can be
clearer or truer, and we shall see that some of the poets of the Veda
too, and, still more, the later Vedantic philosopher, had a clear
insight that it was so.
Only let us be careful in the use of that phrase "it is a mere name."
No name is a mere name. Every name was originally meant for something;
only it often failed to express what it was meant to express, and then
became a weak or an empty name, or what we then call "a mere name." So
it was with these names of the Vedic gods. They were all meant to
express the _Beyond_, the Invisible behind the Visible, the Infinite
within the Finite, the Supernatural above the Natural, the Divine,
omnipresent, and omnipotent. They failed in expressing what, by its
very nature, must always remain inexpressible. But that Inexpressible
itself remained, and in spite of all these failures, it never
succumbed, or vanished from the mind of the ancient thinkers and
poets, but always called for new and better names, nay calls for them
even now, and will call for them to the very end of man's existence
upon earth.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 221: Muir, iv. p. 209]
[Footnote 222: Muir, iv. p. 214.]
[Footnote 223: Hibbert Lectures, p. 307.]
[Footnote 224: X. 168, 3, 4.]
[Footnote 225: See Kaegi, Rig-Veda, p. 61.]
[Footnote 226: Rig-Veda II. 13, 12; IV. 19, 6.]
[Footnote 227: Joshua x. 13.]
[Footnote 228: Rig-Veda IV. 30, 3; X. 138, 3.]
[Footnote 229: L. c. VIII. 37, 3.]
[Footnote 230: L. c. VIII. 78, 5.]
[Footnote 231: I am very strongly inclined to regard these names as
Kushite or Semitic; Hermes, from [Hebrew: Cherem], the sun; Dionysos,
from _dyan_, the judge, and _nisi_, mankind; Orpheus, from _Orfa_, the
Arabic name of Edessa; Prometheus, from _pro_ and _manthano_, to
learn.--A. W.]
[Footnote 232: Muir, iv. p. 23.]
[Footnote 233: Ibid. p. 142. An excellent paper on Par_g_anya was
published by Buehler in 1862, "Orient und Occident," vol. i. p. 214.]
[Footnote 234: Rig-Veda VII. 101, 6.]
[Footnote 235: Rig-Veda V. 63, 3-6.]
[Footnote 236: L. c. I. 38, 9.]
[Footnote 237: L. c. I. 164, 51.]
[Footnote 238: L. c. X. 98, 1.]
[Footnote 239: Rig-Veda V. 83. See Buehler, "Orient und Occident," vol.
i. p. 214; Zimmer, "Altindisches Leben," p. 43.]
[Footnote 240: Both Buehler ("Orient und Occident," vol. i, p. 224) and
Zimmer (Z. f. D. A. vii. p. 169) say that the lightning is represented
as the son of Par_g_anya in Rig-Veda VII. 101, 1. This seems
doubtful.]
[Footnote 241: Rig-Veda VII. 102, 1.]
[Footnote 242: L. c. VIII. 6, 1.]
[Footnote 243: See Max Mueller, Sanskrit Grammar, Sec. 174, 10.]
[Footnote 244: Cf. Gobh. G_ri_hya S. III. 3, 15,
vidyut--stanayitnu--p_ri_shiteshu.]
[Footnote 245: U_gg_valadatta, in his commentary on the
U_n_adi-sutras, iii. 103. admits the same transition of sh into _g_ in
the verb p_ri_sh, as the etymon of par_g_anya.]
[Footnote 246: For different etymologies, see Buehler, "Orient und
Occident," i. p. 214; Muir, "Original Sanskrit Texts," v. p. 140;
Grassmann, in his Dictionary to the Rig-Veda, s. v.; Zimmer,
"Zeitscrift fuer Deutsches Alterthum, Neue Folge," vii. p. 164.]
[Footnote 247: In order to identify Perkunas with Par_g_anya, we must
go another step backward, and look upon _g_ or g, in the root parg, as
a weakening of an original k in park. This, however, is a frequent
phonetic process. See Buehler, in Benfey's "Orient und Occident," ii.
p. 717.]
[Footnote 248: Lituanian perkun-kulke, thunder-bolt, perkuno gaisis,
storm. See Voelkel, "Die lettischen Sprachreste," 1879, p. 23.]
[Footnote 249: "Perkuno, war der dritte Abgott und man ihn anruffte
um's Gewitters willen, damit sie Regen haetten und schoen wetter zu
seiner Zeit, und ihn der Donner und blix kein schaden thett." Cf.
"Gottesides bei den alten Preussen," Berlin, 1870, p. 23. The triad of
the gods is called Triburti, Tryboze; l. c. p. 29.]
[Footnote 250: Grimm, "Teutonic Mythology," p. 175; and Lasitzki
(Lasicius) "Joannes De Russorum, Moscovitarum et Tartarorum religione,
sacrificiis, nuptiarum et funerum ritu, Spirae Nemetum," 1582; idem De
Diis Samagitarum.]
[Footnote 251: Grimm, l. c. p. 176, quoting from Joh. Gutslaff,
"Kurzer Bericht und Unterricht von der falsch heilig genannten Baeche
in Liefland Woehhanda," Dorpat, 1644, pp. 362-364.]
[Footnote 252: In modern Esthonian Pitkne, the Finnish Pitcainen(?).]
[Footnote 253: On foreign influences in Esthonian stories, see
"Ehstniche Maerchen," von T. Kreutzwald, 1869, Vorwort (by Schiefner),
p. iv.]
[Footnote 254: Grimm suggests in his "Teutonic Mythology" that
Par_g_anya should be identified with the Gothic fairguni, or mountain.
He imagines that from being regarded as the abode of the god it had
finally been called by his name. Ferg_unn_a and V_ir_gu_n_ia, two
names of mountains in Germany, are relics of the name. The name of the
god, if preserved in the Gothic, would have been Fairguneis; and
indeed in the Old Norse language Fioergynn is the father of Frigg, the
wife of Odin, and Fioergynnior, the Earth-goddess, is mother of Thor.
Professor Zimmer takes the same view. Grimm thinks that the Greeks and
Romans, by changing _f_ into _h_, represented Fergunni by Hercynia,
and, in fine, he traces the words _ber_g and _bur_g back to
Parganya.--A. W.]
[Footnote 255: Rig-Veda II. 28.]
[Footnote 256: Atharva-Veda IV. 16.]
[Footnote 257: Psalm cxxxix. 1, 2, "O Lord, thou hast searched me and
known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou
understandest my thought afar off."]
[Footnote 258: Psalm cxxxix. 9, "If I take the wings of the morning,
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand
lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."]
[Footnote 259: Rig-veda III. 9, 9; X. 52, 6.]
LECTURE VII.
VEDA AND VEDANTA.
I do not wonder that I should have been asked by some of my hearers to
devote part of my last lecture to answering the question, how the
Vedic literature could have been composed and preserved, if writing
was unknown in India before 500 B.C., while the hymns of the Rig-Veda
are said to date from 1500 B.C. Classical scholars naturally ask what
is the date of our oldest MSS. of the Rig-Veda, and what is the
evidence on which so high an antiquity is assigned to its contents. I
shall try to answer this question as well as I can, and I shall begin
with a humble confession that the oldest MSS. of the Rig-Veda, known
to us at present, date not from 1500 B.C., but from about 1500 A.D.
We have therefore a gap of three thousand years, which it will require
a strong arch of argument to bridge over.
But that is not all.
You may know how, in the beginning of this century, when the age of
the Homeric poems was discussed, a German scholar, Frederick August
Wolf, asked two momentous questions:
1. At what time did the Greeks first become acquainted with
the alphabet and use it for inscriptions on public
monuments, coins, shields, and for contracts, both public
and private?[260]
2. At what time did the Greeks first think of using writing
for literary purposes, and what materials did they employ
for that purpose?
These two questions and the answers they elicited threw quite a new
light on the nebulous periods of Greek literature. A fact more firmly
established than any other in the ancient history of Greece is that
the Ionians learned the alphabet from the Phenicians. The Ionians
always called their letters Phenician letters,[261] and the very name
of Alphabet was a Phenician word. We can well understand that the
Phenicians should have taught the Ionians in Asia Minor a knowledge of
the alphabet, partly for commercial purposes, _i.e._ for making
contracts, partly for enabling them to use those useful little sheets,
called _Periplus_, or _Circumnavigations_, which at that time were as
precious to sailors as maps were to the adventurous seamen of the
middle ages. But from that to a written literature, in our sense of
the word, there is still a wide step. It is well known that the
Germans, particularly in the North, had their Runes for inscriptions
on tombs, goblets, public monuments, but not for literary
purposes.[262] Even if a few Ionians at Miletus and other centres of
political and commercial life acquired the art of writing, where could
they find writing materials? and still more important, where could
they find readers? The Ionians, when they began to write, had to be
satisfied with a hide or pieces of leather, which they called
_diphthera_, and until that was brought to the perfection of vellum
or parchment, the occupation of an author cannot have been very
agreeable.[263]
So far as we know at present the Ionians began to write about the
middle of the sixth century B.C.; and, whatever may have been said to
the contrary, Wolf's _dictum_ still holds good that with them the
beginning of a written literature was the same as the beginning of
prose writing.
Writing at that time was an effort, and such an effort was made for some
great purpose only. Hence the first written skins were what we should
call Murray's Handbooks, called _Periegesis_ or _Periodos_, or, if
treating of sea-voyages, _Periplus_, that is, guide-books, books to lead
travellers round a country or round a town. Connected with these
itineraries were the accounts of the foundations of cities, the
_Ktisis_. Such books existed in Asia Minor during the sixth and fifth
centuries, and their writers were called by a general term,
_Logographi_, or [Greek: logioi] or [Greek: logopoioi],[264] as opposed
to [Greek: aoidoi], the poets. They were the forerunners of the Greek
historians, and Herodotus (443 B.C.), the so-called father of history,
made frequent use of their works.
The whole of this incipient literary activity belonged to Asia Minor.
From "Guides through towns and countries," literature seems to have
spread at an early time to Guides through life, or philosophical
dicta, such as are ascribed to Anaximander the Ionian (610-547
B.C.[265]), and Pherekydes the Syrian (540 B.C.). These names carry us
into the broad daylight of history, for Anaximander was the teacher of
Anaximenes, Anaximenes of Anaxagoras, and Anaxagoras of Perikles. At
that time writing was a recognized art, and its cultivation had been
rendered possible chiefly through trade with Egypt and the importation
of _papyros_. In the time of AEschylos (500 B.C.) the idea of writing
had become so familiar that he could use it again and again in
poetical metaphors,[266] and there seems little reason why we should
doubt that both Peisistratos (528 B.C.) and Polykrates of Samos (523
B.C.) were among the first collectors of Greek manuscripts.
In this manner the simple questions asked by Wolf helped to reduce the
history of ancient Greek literature to some kind of order,
particularly with reference to its first beginnings.
It would therefore seem but reasonable that the two first questions to
be asked by the students of Sanskrit literature should have been:
1. At what time did the people of India become acquainted
with an alphabet?
2. At what time did they first use such alphabet for
literary purposes?
Curiously enough, however, these questions remained in abeyance for a
long time, and, as a consequence, it was impossible to introduce even
the first elements of order into the chaos of ancient Sanskrit
literature.[267]
I can here state a few facts only. There are no inscriptions to be
found anywhere in India before the middle of the third century B.C.
These inscriptions are Buddhist, put up during the reign of A_s_oka,
the grandson of _K_andragupta, who was the contemporary of Seleucus,
and at whose court in Patalibothra Megasthenes lived as ambassador of
Seleucus. Here, as you see, we are on historical ground. In fact,
there is little doubt that A_s_oka, the king who put up these
inscriptions in several parts of his vast kingdom, reigned from
259-222 B.C.
These inscriptions are written in two alphabets--one written from
right to left, and clearly derived from an Aramaaean, that is, a
Semitic alphabet; the other written from left to right, and clearly an
adaptation, and an artificial or systematic adaptation, of a Semitic
alphabet to the requirements of an Indian language. That second
alphabet became the source of all Indian alphabets, and of many
alphabets carried chiefly by Buddhist teachers far beyond the limits
of India, though it is possible that the earliest Tamil alphabet may
have been directly derived from the same Semitic source which supplied
both the _dextrorsum_ and the _sinistrorsum_ alphabets of India.
Here then we have the first fact--viz. that writing, even for
monumental purposes, was unknown in India before the third century
B.C.
But writing for commercial purposes was known in India before that
time. Megasthenes was no doubt quite right when he said that the
Indians did not know letters,[268] that their laws were not written,
and that they administered justice from memory. But Nearchus, the
admiral of Alexander the Great, who sailed down the Indus (325 B.C.),
and was therefore brought in contact with the merchants frequenting
the maritime stations of India, was probably equally right in
declaring that "the Indians wrote letters on cotton that had been well
beaten together." These were no doubt commercial documents, contracts,
it may be, with Phenician or Egyptian captains, and they would prove
nothing as to the existence in India at that time of what we mean by a
written literature. In fact, Nearchus himself affirms what Megasthenes
said after him, namely that "the laws of the sophists in India were
not written." If, at the same time, the Greek travellers in India
speak of mile-stones, and of cattle marked by the Indians with various
signs and also with numbers, all this would perfectly agree with what
we know from other sources, that though the art of writing may have
reached India before the time of Alexander's conquest, its employment
for literary purposes cannot date from a much earlier time.
Here then we are brought face to face with a most startling fact.
Writing was unknown in India before the fourth century before Christ,
and yet we are asked to believe that the Vedic literature in its three
well-defined periods, the Mantra, Brahma_n_a, and Sutra periods, goes
back to at least a thousand years before our era.
Now the Rig-Veda alone, which contains a collection of ten books of
hymns addressed to various deities, consists of 1017 (1028) poems,
10,580 verses, and about 153,826 words.[269] How were these poems
composed--for they are composed in very perfect metre--and how, after
having been composed, were they handed down from 1500 before Christ to
1500 after Christ, the time to which most of our best Sanskrit MSS.
belong?