the gods regard thee favourably, without hostility. 22. We commit thee to autumn, winter, spring, summer. May the rains be pleasant to thee, in which the plants grow up. 23. Death rules over bipeds; death rules over quadrupeds. From that Death the ruler I rescue thee; do not fear. 24. Thou, who art uninjured, shalt not die; thou shalt not die; do not fear. They do not die there; they do not go to the nethermost darkness, (25) every thing lives there, cow, horse, man, beast, in the place where this prayer is used, the bulwark of life. 26. May it preserve thee from curse from thy equals and friends. Be undying, immortal, long-lived; let not thy breaths abandon thy body. 27. May the gods deliver thee from those hundred deaths, from those dangers which are surpassable, and from that Agni Vaiśvānara (fire of the funeral pile ?). 28. Thou, the medicament named Pūtudru (Butea frondosa), art the body of Agni, the deliverer, the slayer of Rakshases, and of rivals, and thou art the chaser away of diseases.” 450 SECTION XXIII. BRIEF NOTES ON SOCIETY AND LIFE IN THE VEDIC AGE, AS REPRESENTED IN THE HYMNS. IN the Introductions to the first three Volumes of his translation of the Rig-veda (vol. i. pp. xl ff.; vol. ii. pp. xv ff.; vol. iii. xiv ff.), Professor Wilson has adduced from the hymns a variety of facts illustrative of the social and political condition of the people of India, and of the advance which they had made in civilization at the period when those hymns were composed. I propose in this section to bring forward such further particulars, connected with the same subjects, as I have noticed in the hymns, without excluding the topics already elucidated by Professor Wilson. It is not only the facts which are directly stated or implied, in regard to the various subjects of inquiry, which may be understood as supplying the requisite information. References of a corresponding character made to the gods, their dwellings, dress, ornaments, chariots, weapons, etc., may (as in such a stage of religious progress, more especially, men frame their gods after their own image magnified and idealized) be taken as applicable, mutatis mutandis, to their worshippers. (1.) Country occupied by the Vedic people, their villages and cities. The country originally occupied in India by the Vedic people was the tract watered by the seven rivers, the modern Panjab; but they gradually extended themselves to the eastward and southward; and in R.V. iv. 36, 18 reference is made to two enemies living beyond (i.e. no doubt east of) the Sarayu (uta tyā sadyaḥ āryā Sarayor Indra pārataḥ Arnachitraratha 'vadhiḥ). For details I refer to the second volume of this This country was no doubt in part cultivated, as we shall see that frequent references are made to agriculture. But work, pp. 373 ff. probably large tracts were covered by forests, which are sometimes referred to. See the references to Agni consuming the woods, above (p. 212); and the hymn to Aranyānī, quoted in p. 422. As in our own day, in the north-west provinces of India and the Panjab, the houses, in places remote from the hills, and where the soil is alluvial, without any supply of stone, were no doubt constructed of mud.623 Villages (grāma) are mentioned in R.V. i. 114, 1 (viśvam pushṭam asmin grāme anaturam | "may everything in this village be fat and healthy"); i. 44, 10 (asi grāmeshu avitā| "Thou (Agni) art the protector in (our) villages"); i. 149, 4 (gāvaḥ iva grāmam | "as cattle come to a village"); and x. 146, 1 quoted above. Cities or fortified places (pur) are also constantly mentioned. In one place it is said that Indra demolished a hundred cities of stone in favour of the liberal Divodāsa, iv. 30, 20, that (śatam aśmanmayīnām purām Indro vi āsyat | Divodāsāya dāśushe). Even if we should suppose this was a mythological reference to the aerial cities of the Asuras (comp. x. 67, 3), it might be received as evidence that they had as their prototypes stone-built cities on the earth, a circumstance in itself by no means improbable in tracts of country bordering on the hills, where stone is abundant. Iron cities or fortifications (puraḥ āyasiḥ) are mentioned in R.V. i. 58, 8; ii. 20, 8; iv. 27, 1; vii. 3, 7; vii. 15, 14; vii. 95, 1; viii. 89, 8; x. 101, 8, where the reference is either figurative or purely fanciful and mythological. Cities with a hundred enclosures or fortifications (śatabhuji) are referred to in i. 166, 8; vii. 15, 14; and although they are only alluded to as figurative expressions of the means of protection afforded by the gods, they no doubt suggest the idea of forts, consisting apparently of a series of concentric walls, as actually existing in the country at the time. (2) Religious worship. Let the reader try to conceive himself as living 3000 years ago or upwards in the province of India which has been above described. At that period the Indo-Aryans had for some time been settled in that 623 Bricks (ishtaka) are frequently mentioned in the Brahmanas as used for the construction of vedis, or altars, but they may have been unbaked. region, and had begun to consider it as their home, though they were still molested by the barbarous tribes of another stock, and of a ruder religion, who had been previously in possession of the country, and naturally looked upon the intruders with dislike and dread. Conscious of their own superiority, and strong in their faith in the protection of their ancestral gods, the Aryans regarded these aboriginal tribes and their savage rites and character with abhorrence not unmingled with apprehension. We shall therefore suppose one of the small outlying village settlements of the Aryans to be situated on the edge of a forest, part of which has been cut down, cleared, and cultivated. The population has already multiplied to a considerable extent, and (as we shall see further on) a division of labour has been long established. The more thoughtful and contemplative class has now devoted itself to the worship of the gods; the more enterprizing and warlike members of the community have assumed authority over the rest; the great mass of the people follow the occupations of trade and husbandry; while a gradually increasing number of the adjoining barbarians is becoming incorporated in the growing society as slaves or handicraftsmen of the lowest description. Returning home in the evening through the forest, a member of one of the priestly families, who is at the same time of a poetical temperament, experiences emotions such as are sketched in the hymn to Aranyānī, which is quoted above in p. 422. Anxious to propitiate the favour of the gods, and to worship them all with the customary ceremonies, he is frequently found watching during the night (not without apprehension of attack from the aboriginal tribes lurking in the adjoining thickets, or from the howling goblins with which his imagination peoples the surrounding darkness), and looking for the signs by which he supposes the earliest appearance of the deities who usher in the day to be indicated. The hymns which are addressed to these divinities, the two Asvins and to Ushas (the Dawn), at least those which salute the arrival of the latter, do not spring from devotion alone, but are the product of a deep poetical feeling, and a delicate imaginative power. The Aśvins are the first to appear, the time of their manifestation being (as we have seen, p. 234) defined as that between midnight and the earliest manifestation of light; and their supposed advent is hailed with suitable hymns. Then, as the first streaks of the ruddy dawn become visible in the east, the poet breaks out into an enthusiastic burst of devotion to the lovely goddess Ushas, who every morning renews her youth. Preparation is now made for the birth of the sacred Agni, who springs into life as soon as the physical instruments of his generation are brought into contact, is then duly lauded by his votary, and is imagined immediately to proceed as a messenger to summon the gods to whom sacrifice is to be offered by their worshipper. Soon after Surya (the sun) shoots up above the horizon, darting his rays across the firmament, and illuminating everything with his splendour; and receives, under a variety of forms or epithets, the adoration of the delighted poet. In the hot season, when the ground has been parched by long drought, and all eyes are turned to the gathering clouds in the hope that they will soon discharge their watery treasures, Parjanya, the raingod, is besought to send rain; and Indra, the regent of the firmament, and the storm-gods, the Maruts, are supplicated to fulfil the functions which the imagination of their worshippers has assigned to them, of combating the malignant demons of the atmosphere, and compelling them to yield up the waters which they keep shut up in the clouds. The other gods, or a select number of them, are then invoked. Along with the recitation of hymns and prayers, various sorts of oblations are offered up at different periods of the day, to the several deities. (3) Did the Vedic Indians make images of their gods? Professor Müller (Chips from a German Workshop, i. 38) answers this question in the negative. "The religion of the Veda," he says, "knows of no idols. The worship of idols in India is a secondary formation, a later degradation of the more primitive worship of ideal gods." On the other hand, Dr. Bollensen finds in the hymns clear references to images of the gods (Journal of the German Oriental Society, xxii. 587 ff.). He writes, "From the common appellation of the gods as divo naras, 'men of the sky,' or simply naras (lares?), 'men,' and from the epithet nṛipeśas, 624 having the form of men,' R.V. iii. 4, 5, we may conclude that the Indians did not merely in 624 Professor Roth s.v. says that according to Sāyaṇa the word means “having the form of men," but perhaps signifies "formed, or adorned by men." |