So Jupiter ousted Chronos, and Indra himself had almost ousted Trita, even in the Veda; and Indra and others had almost ousted Varuna. So in the period we are considering had Sakka, in his turn, almost ousted Indra. Though the epic poets afterwards did their best to re-establish Indra on the throne, they had but poor success; for his name and his fame had dwindled away. And we catch sight of him, in these records, just as he is fading dimly away on the horizon, and changing his shape into that of the successor to his dignity and power.'

And

It is the same, but in each case in different degrees, with other Vedic gods. It were tedious here to go at length into each case. Isana, the vigorous and youthful form of the dread Śiva of the future, is already on a level with Soma and Varuna. Pajāpati and Brahmā' will soon come to be considered as co-partners with Sakka in the lordship over all the gods. The worship of Agni is scoffed at as on a par with the hocus-pocus of witchcraft and divination, and it is soon to be laughed to scorn in the amusing tales of the folklore of the people." Vayu, the wind-god, never very important, is just mentioned in our list, but nowhere else in texts of that age, and will soon also be the laughing-stock of the story-teller. Varuna is still a power, ranked with the highest,' but he will soon be reduced to a tree-god, a Nāga king,' a lord of the oracle girls,'

10

who, possessed by the god, will, as Pythias, prophesy smooth things. And Vishnu, though mentioned in our poem under the name of Veņhu, has scarcely as yet appeared above the horizon. Pajjunna is still the rain-god in the Suttantas; he is mentioned in both poems; and has retained this character even in the folklore.'

I know of no other Vedic gods mentioned in this literature. Dyaus, Mitra, and Savitri, Pūshan, the Adityas, the Asvins and the Maruts, Aditi and Diti and Urvaśī, and many more, are all departed. They survive only within the enclosures of the Vedic schools. The people know them no longer.

Now there is no doubt a long interval of time between the close of the Rig Veda collection of hymns and the rise of Buddhism. The Vedic anthology, small as it is, may not give, even for its own time, a complete statement of Indian belief. Some of the differences between Vedic mythology and popular religion at the time of the rise of Buddhism may therefore be due to the influence of an unrecorded past. But this can only explain a part, and probably a small part, of the difference. The old gods, that is the old ideas, when they have survived, have been so much changed; so many of them have not survived at all; so many new ones have sprung into vigorous life and wide-reaching influence, that one conclusion is inevitable. The common view that the Indians were very different from other folk in similar stages of development, that to that difference was due the stolid, not to say stupid, conserva

J. 1. 332, 4. 253; C. P. 3. 10. 7.

tism of their religious conceptions, that they were more given to superstition, less intellectual, than for instance the Greeks and Romans, must be given up. Derived partly from a too exclusive study of the priestly books, partly from reading back into the past a mistaken view of modern conditions, it cannot stand against the new evidence derived from the Jain and Buddhist literatures written, or rather composed, in independence of the priests. The real facts lead to the opposite view. They show a constant progress from Vedic times onwards. Some reasons for this will be suggested in the next chapter. But whatever the facts, and whatever the reasons for them, we are not likely to cease from hearing that parrot cry of self-complacent ignorance, "The immovable East"- the implied sop to vanity is too sweet to be neglected.

THE

HESE details of the lower phases of religion in India in the sixth century B.C. have great and essential similarity with the beliefs held, not only at the same time in the other centres of civilisation,— in China, Persia, and Egypt, in Italy and Greece, but also among the savages of then and now. But there is a further and more striking resemblance. Sir Henry Maine has said: "Nothing is more remarkable than the extreme fewness of progressive societies the difference between them and the stationary races is one of the greatest secrets enquiry has yet to penetrate."1

Whatever the secret, above and beyond the influence of economic conditions, may have been, we know that civilisation, of a kind at least, extended back in time, on the four great river basins of the Nile and the Euphrates, the Ganges and the Yellow River, not merely through centuries, but through thousands of years, if reckoned from to-day. Yet in

1 Ancient Law, p. 22.

each of those places - though there was a real and progressive civilisation, and ideas and customs were no doubt constantly changing and growing--there was a certain dead level, if not a complete absence of what we should call philosophic thought. The animistic hypotheses, the soul-theories, of their savage ancestors seemed sufficient, even to the progressive races, to explain all that they saw or felt. Men varied, but never dreamed of rejecting, the soul-theories. They did not even build up on the basis of them any large and general views, either of ethics, or of philosophy, or of religion. Then suddenly, and almost simultaneously, and almost certainly independently, there is evidence, about the sixth century B.C., in each of these widely separated centres of civilisation, of a leap forward in speculative thought, of a new birth in ethics, of a religion. of conscience threatening to take the place of the old religion of custom and magic. In each of these countries similar causes, the same laws regulating the evolution of ideas, had taken just about the same number of centuries to evolve, out of similar conditions, a similar result. Is there a more stupendous marvel in the whole history of mankind? Does any more suggestive problem await the solution of the historian of human thought?

The solution will not be possible till we have a more accurate knowledge of the circumstances which led up, in each country, to the awakening. And in India one important factor in the preceding circumstances seems to me to have been, hitherto, too much neglected.

The intense interest, from the