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does exhibit in some points a certain similarity to that of Homer and Hesiod, and the mutual resemblance between the religious ideas of those ancient works is, upon the whole, greater than that existing between the later Indian and the Greek pantheons. I say that, upon the whole, the older Indian mythology coincides more nearly with the Greek than the later Indian mythology does. But, on the other hand, the later Indian system presents some points of resemblance with the Greek which the Vedic system does not exhibit. I allude to the fact that we find in the Indian epic poems and Purānas a god of the sea, a god of war, and a goddess of love, who (the last two, at least,) are unknown to the oldest parts of the Veda, and yet correspond in a general way to the Poseidon, the Ares, and the Aphrodite of the Greeks. Personifications of this sort may, however, be either the product of an early instinct which leads men to create divine representatives and superintendents of every department of nature, as well as of human life and action; or they may arise in part from a later process of imagination or reflection which conducts to the same result, and from a love of systematic completeness which impels a people to fill up any blanks in their earlier mythology, and to be always adding to and modifying it. Resemblances of this last description, though they are by no means accidental, are not necessarily anything more than the results of similar processes going on in nations possessing the same general tendencies and characteristics. But the older points of coincidence between the religious ideas of the Greeks and the Indians, to which reference was first made, are of a different character, and are the undoubted remains of an original mythology which was common to the ancestors of both races. This is shown by the fact that, in the cases to which I allude, it is not only the functions, but the names, of the gods which correspond in both literatures.

(2) Antiquity and peculiarity of the Vedic mythology.

But the value of the Vedic mythology to the general scholar does not consist merely in the circumstance that a few religious conceptions, and the names of two or three deities, are common to it with the Greek. It is even more important to observe that the earliest monuments of Indian poetry, consisting, as they do, almost exclusively of

hymns in praise of the national deities, and being the productions of an age far anterior to that of Homer and Hesiod, represent a more ancient period of religious development than we discover in the Greek poets, and disclose to us, in the earliest stages of formation, a variety of myths which a few centuries later had assumed a fixed and recognised form. It is also to be noticed that, from the copiousness of the materials they supply, the hymns of the Rig-veda furnish us with far more minute illustrations of the natural workings of the human mind, in the period of its infancy, upon matters of religion than we can find in any other literature whatever. From their higher antiquity, these Indian hymns are also fitted to throw light on the meaning of a few points of the Greek system which were before obscure. Thus, as we shall see, the Indian Dyaus (sky, or heaven) explains the original meaning of the Greek Zeus, and the Sanskrit Varuna gives a clue to the proper signification of Ouranos.

As in the first volume of this work, 2nd edition, pp. 2-4,3 I have stated the grounds on which the Vedic hymns are assumed to have been composed at a period considerably more than a thousand years before our era, I shall here take their great antiquity for granted, and proceed to give some account of their cosmogony and mythology.

(3) Origin of cosmogonic and mythological speculation.

To a simple mind reflecting, in the early ages of the world, on the origin of all things, various solutions of the mystery might naturally present themselves. Sometimes the production of the existing universe

would be ascribed to physical, and at other times to spiritual, powers. 1

On the one hand, the various processes of growth and change which are constantly visible in all the departments of nature might have suggested the notion of the world having gradually arisen out of nothing, or out of a pre-existing undeveloped substance. Such an idea of the spontaneous evolution of all things out of a primeval principle, or out of indiscrete matter, called Prakriti, became at a later period the foundation of the Sankhya philosophy. Or, again, perceiving light and form and colour

2 See Professor Max Müller's essay on "Comparative Mythology," in the Oxford Essays for 1856, p. 47, and the reprint in Chips from a German Workshop, p. 75 f. See also Vol. II. pp. 206 ff. and Vol. III. 2nd ed. 217 f. and 224.

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and beauty emerge slowly every morning out of a gloom in which all objects had before appeared to be confounded, the early speculator might conceive that in like manner the brightness and order of the world around him had sprung necessarily out an antecedent night in which the elements of all things had existed together in indistinguishable chaos. And, in fact, this idea of the universe having arisen out of darkness and chaos is the doctrine of one of the later hymns of the R.V. (x. 129). Or, on the other hand, contemplating the results effected by human design and energy, and arguing from the less to the greater, or rather impelled by an irresistible instinct to create other beings after his own likeness, but endowed with higher powers, the ancient thinker might feel that the well-ordered frame of nature could not possibly have sprung into being from any blind necessity, but must have been the work of a conscious and intelligent will. In this stage of thought, however, before the mind had risen to the conception of one supreme creator and governor of all things, the various departments of nature were apportioned between different gods, each of whom was imgined to preside over his own especial domain. But these domains were imperfectly defined. One blended with another, and might thus be subject, in part, to the rule of more than one deity. Or, according to the various relations under which they were regarded, these several provinces of the creation might be subdivided among a plurality of divinities, or varying forms of the same divinity. These remarks might be illustrated by numerous instances drawn from the Vedic mythology. In considering the literary productions of this same period, we further find that as yet the difference between mind and matter was but imperfectly conceived, and that, although, in some cases, the distinction between some particular province of nature and the deity who was supposed to preside over it was clearly discerned, yet in other instances the two things were confounded, and the same visible object was at different times regarded diversely, as being either a portion of the inanimate universe, or an animated being, and a cos

4 Arist. Pol. i. 2, 7. Καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς δὲ διὰ τοῦτο πάντες φασὶ βασιλεύεσθαι, ὅτι καὶ ἀυτοὶ δι μὲν ἔτι καὶ νῦν, δι δὲ τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἐβασιλεύοντο· ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ ἔιδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν δι ἄνθρωποι, ὅντω καὶ τοὺς βίους τῶν θεῶν. "And all men represent the gods as being ruled by a king, because they themselves, either now, or formerly, were so governed. And just as men regard the forms, so also they consider the lives, of the gods, to be similar to their own."

mical power. Thus, in the Vedic hymns, the sun, the sky, and the earth, are severally considered, sometimes as natural objects governed by particular gods, and sometimes as themselves gods who generate and control other beings.

(4) Variety in the conceptions of the Vedic poets.

The varieties and discrepancies which are in this way incident to all nature-worship, are, in the case of the Vedic mythology, augmented by the number of the poets by whom it was moulded, and the length of time during which it continued in process of formation.

The Rig-veda consists of more than a thousand hymns, composed by successive generations of poets during a period of many centuries. In these songs the authors gave expression not only to the notions of the supernatural world which they had inherited from their ancestors, but also to their own new conceptions. In that early age the imaginations of men were peculiarly open to impressions from without; and in a country like India, where the phenomena of nature are often of the most striking description, such spectators could not fail to be overpowered by their influence. The creative faculties of the poets were thus stimulated to the highest pitch. In the starry sky, in the dawn, in the morning sun scaling the heavens, in the bright clouds floating across the air and assuming all manner of magnificent or fantastic shapes, in the waters, in the rain, in the storm, in the thunder and lightning, they beheld the presence and agency of different divine powers, propitious or angry, whose characters corresponded with those of the physical operations or appearances in which they were manifested. In the hymns composed under the influence of any grand phenomena, the authors would naturally ascribe a peculiar or exclusive importance to the deities by whose action these appeared to have been produced, and would celebrate their greatness with proportionate fervour. Other poets might attribute the same natural appearances to the agency of other deities, whose greatness they would in like manner extol; while others again would devote themselves in preference to the service of some other god whose working they seemed to witness in some other department of creation. In this way, while the same traditional divinities were acknowledged by all, the power, dignity, and functions

of each particular god might be differently estimated by different poets, or perhaps by the same poet, according to the external influences by which he was awed or inspired on each occasion. And it might even happen that some deity who had formerly remained obscure, would, by the genius of a new poet devoted to his worship, be brought out into greater prominence. In such circumstances it need not surprise us if we find one particular power or deity in one place put above, and in another place subordinated to, some other god; sometimes regarded as the creator, and sometimes as the created. This is very prominently illustrated in the case of the Vedic divinities, Dyaus and Prithivi, Heaven and Earth, to which the second Section shall be devoted, and by other instances which will be brought to light in the following pages.

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