History of Religion

et civilised; in the other a people of high organisation and culture, but deficient in vigour; the former religion is one of action, the latter one o

tles it to be taken as a typical example of the Aryan religions. In literary chronology it is the earliest of them, inasmuch as its books are the oldest sacred literature of Aryan faith; but in point of development it is not an early but an advanced product. The absorbing interest it offers to the student of our science is due to the fact that it presents in an unbroken sequence a growth of religious thought, which, beginning with simple conceptions and advancing to a great priestly ritual, can be seen to pass

ns altogether subduing the former inhabitants, were dwelling in the Punjaub. The religion of the hymns is a strongly national one. The Aryans appeal to their gods to help them against the races, afterwards driven to the south and to the sea coasts, who differ from themselves in colour, in physiognomy, in language, in manners, and in religion. Nor are these conquerors by any means an uncultivated people; they had long been using metals; they built houses,-a number together in a village; they lived principally by keeping cattle, but also by tillage, and by hunting. They

ble feature of the banquets in these hymns; the solid part consists of butter, milk, rice or cakes; but animals were also killed, and the horse-sacrifice was a specially important one. The hymn also is an essential part of the rite; the sacrifice would have no virtue without it. It consists of praise and prayer. T

e being, now to another; each has a story which is dwelt on and a number of functions belonging to him, for the sake of which he is extolled and sought after; each god, that

rn in heaven, born also daily at the sacrifice by the rubbing together of two pieces of wood, his parents whom he consumes. He is a priest carrying the offerings of men up to the gods, but he was a priest at the first sacrifice, the primeval heavenly sacrifice, before he had come down to men. He is also the guest and household friend of man, a kindly and familiar being. But he pervades all nature, and all growth and energy are due to him. Soma,

nspirer of all noble thoughts and the answerer of pious prayers, the rewarder of all who trust in him, and the forgiver of the penitent. It is good to sacrifice to him and to offer him soma in abundance; for it strengthens him to take up afresh his conflicts and labours as the champion of man. Indra is surrounded by the Maruts, the storm-gods, who are separately invoked in many hymns. They drive through the sky with splendour and with mighty music, and bring rain to the parched earth. Their father is Rudra, also a god of storms, the handsomest of all the gods, and, in spite of his thunderbolts, a helpful and kindly being. Wherever he sees evil done, he hurls his spear to smite the evildoer, but he i

n can scarcely represent the hymns with the accuracy the scholar would desire, but, on the other hand, a literal translation, such as that of Professor Max

I

oft of old

light, our S

delicious

all other

knew how we

for her i

she crush

didst sip u

, on thy n

ur that tho

ose jovial ta

urvive in str

ou prince of

drained'st

Soma draug

s to the lak

to the o

foaming t

ressed to s

thy utmost

y stag in f

t roams in

e cooling br

taste, and q

again, prof

ER TO

t view with

mplexioned

gods, thei

s homage

us horses, c

t give our s

away the dark-

wless, sens

Indra, hate

e race which

way, the ro

arbarians bl

, Indra, fr

hat haunt us

isturb by c

ed offerin

friend, dis

live a hu

earthly cou

the region

live in ce

uaffing ther

A

ough thine ess

hree; as fire t

flashest in t

u flamest as

n thou hadst th

f yore a hol

own on human he

d'st a deniz

mystic pair by

ed, forth flash

n and earth I

hild devours th

VAR

high our deeds, as

do, though men would f

ver moves, or steals

secret cell,-the god

ther plot, and de

a third, and all the

him belong those vas

rest, and yet in th

the sky should th

elude the grasp o

from the skies, glide

ll-scanning sweep to

aven and earth, whate

f Varuna, the kin

gs all he counts of

ersal frame as game

hich thou fling'st, O

overtake, but all

s a shepherd who loses none of his flock; a guide also, both in the journeys of this world and in the last journey. A number of the principal gods have the common title of Adityas or children of Aditi, immensity, a being too vast and undetermined to be clearly represented. We should also mention Ushas, the dawn, a goddess whom the sun-god is daily chasing; the Asvins or two heavenly charioteers, who daily make the circuit of the heavens; Tvashtri, the smith who made the thunderbolt of Indra; the Ribhus, artificers who were once men and have been admitted to

is held, on the one hand, that it is a primitive religious product, that it shows us some of the very first efforts men made to have a religion; while on the other hand it is he

faith. Savage legends and especially immoral stories of the gods are markedly absent from the hymns; they are also free from the element of magic and fetishism; the gods are great beings, and religion consists in intercourse with these great beings. Now the later religious literature of India, the brahmanas or commentaries on the Rigveda and the other later Vedas, contain a variety of legends and a religion by no means free from magic. It may be maintained therefore that the pure religion of the Aryans afterwards became contaminated by contact with the lower religion of the tribes the Aryans had conquered. It was from the Dravidian and Kolarian aborigines, we are told, that Indian religion took its later corruptions. The Vedic religion has no idols, it has no dark descriptions of hell, the caste system on which later Brahmanism was based is absent from it, it has no demons to be guarded against, and no bad deities

of Religi

Texts, vo

or hymn period is to be placed 1000-800 B

ns of Purusha's body when it was cut up. Many stories are to be found in Indian literature which when found elsewhere are judged to be products of savage imagination, and the fact that the Rigveda ignores some of them and refines others, simply shows that the authors of that collection were on a higher level than their people in point of cultivation and of piety, as the psalmists and the prophets of Israel were in advance of theirs. We are led, accordingly, towards the conclusion that during the period when the hymns were written those who took charge of the development of worship in India were seeking to draw away attention from the more superstitious and childish elements of religion, and to bring to the front the pure and lofty intercourse man could have with the good gods. Bad gods are not cultivated; if there are foolish stories about the gods, they are not repeated, everything dark and terrible, as well as everything irrational, is removed from the working religion. Ancestor-worship is not encouraged; family rites continued, but the worship was wider than the family, and was not restricted to particular places. The ideas connected with sacrifice are not indeed very lofty. Sacrifice is, in the first place, barter. Gifts are provided for the gods, that they may give in their turn. In the second place it is a social function in which the god and the worshipper both take part. T

ted adoration can be paid. But it is a monotheism, as M. Barth well puts it, the titular god of which is always changing; and Mr. Max Müller gives to this partial monotheism the name of Kathenotheism; that is, the worship of one god at a time without any denial that other gods exist and are worthy of adoration. Now this form of religion, in which several gods are worshipped, each of whom in turn is regarded as supreme, is not peculiar to India; we have met with it already, we shall meet with it again. But in India a peculiar way was found out of the difficulty. The Indian gods were too little defined, too little personal, too much alike, to maintain their separate personalities with great tenacity; nor did they lend themselves to a monarchical form of pantheon; no one of them was sufficiently marked out from the rest or above the rest, to rule permanently over them. Yet the sense of unity in Indian

RECO

i. Vedic Hymns. xl

Sanscri

's Hibber

m; Hinduism in "Non-Christian

he oldest literature

of India, in Trübne

rg, Die Religion

ligion Védique,

ahmanische Periode der R

in De la

rd Proceedings, v

PTE

N