(3) Did the Vedic Indians make images of their gods? (5) Different ranks in society,-rich and poor; (6) Domestic (8) Food and drink; use of wine. 464. (9) Professions and trades,-carpentry, agriculture, etc. 466. (10) Amusements, gambling, dancers or actors; (11) Crime. 467. (12) Animals, wild and tame. 469. (13) Wars, armies, armour, and weapons. ERRATA ET CORRIGENDA. Page 22 In the page-headings from here to p. 96, for “The Indian gods generally " substitute the headings of the several subsections. 4, for "stānāḥ" read “sthānāḥ.” 19, for "Varunauta" read "Varuna uta." ,, 10, for "sindhave" read "sindhavo." ,, 11, for "praa rṇāmsi” read “pra arnāmsi.” 199," 218, " 224, 225, 228, 234, 237, ", 280, 1, for "v." read “vi.” we seek." 3 from bottom, after "Indra" insert "vi. 21, 4." last line, for "tivram" read "tīvram." 1, for "xiii." read “xiiia.” 10, for "92" read "91." 9, for "rodasysh" read "rodasyoḥ." 4 from bottom, for "viii." read “vii.” ,, 10, for "vrischād" read "vṛischād." 22, for "Tvashța" read "Tvashṭā." 5 from bottom, for "Vivasvät" read "Vivasvat." 3, for "Surya" read "Sūryā." ,, 16, for "Pushan" read "Pūshan." 8, for "z" read “x.” 24, for "191," read "91." 1, for "xxi.” read “xix.” 11 336, ", 350, ", 354, ,, 387, 4 from bottom, for “xăτI T ŵvd” read “xă Ti tŵyd.” ,, 27, for "19," read "1, 9." 407,,, 21, for "54" read “53.” ORIGINAL SANSKRIT TEXTS. VOLUME FIFTH. INTRODUCTION. In the Fourth Volume of this work I have collected the principal passages of the Vedic Hymns which refer to the origin of the universe, and to the characters of the gods Hiranyagarbha, Viśvakarman, Vishnu, Rudra, and the goddess Ambika; and have compared the representations there given of these deities with the later stories and speculations on the same subjects which are to be found in the Brahmanas, and in the mythological poems of a more modern date. In the course of these researches, I have also introduced occasional notices of some of the other Vedic deities, such as Aditi, Indra, Varuna, etc. In the present volume I propose to give a further account of the cosmogony, mythology, and religious ideas exhibited in the hymns of the Rig-veda,' and to compare these occasionally with the corresponding conceptions of the early Greeks. 1 This subject has been already treated by Professor Roth in his dissertations on "The Legend of Jemshid" and on "The Highest Gods of the Arian Races," in the Journal of the German Oriental Society, iv. 417 ff. and vi. 67 ff.; by the same writer, and by Professor Whitney, in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, iii. 291 ff., and 331 607 ff.; by Professor Max Müller in the Oxford Essays for 1856 (reprinted in Chips from a German Workshop, vol. ii. pp. 1 ff.), and in his History of Anc. Sansk. Lit. PP. 531 ff.; by Professor Wilson in the Prefaces to the three vols. of his translation of the Rig-veda; by M. Langlois in the notes to his French translation of the Rig (1) Affinities of the Indian and Grecian mythologies. In the Second Volume of this work I have stated the reasons, drawn from history and from comparative philology, which exist for concluding that the Brahmanical Indians belong to the same race as the Greek, the Latin, the Teutonic, and other nations of Europe. If this conclusion be well-founded, it is evident that at the time when the several branches of the great Indo-European family separated to commence their migrations in the direction of their future homes, they must have possessed in common a large stock of religious and mythological conceptions. This common mythology would, in the natural course of events, and from the action of various causes, undergo a gradual modification analogous to that undergone by the common language which had originally been spoken by all these tribes during the period of their union; and, in the one case as in the other, this modification would assume in the different races a varying character, corresponding to the diversity of the influences to which they were severally subjected. We shall not, therefore, be surprised to find that even the oldest existing mythology of the Indians differs widely from the oldest known mythology of the Greeks, any more than we are to find that the Sanskrit in its earliest surviving forms is a very different language from the earliest extant Greek, since the Vedic hymns, the most primitive remains of Sanskrit poetry, date from a period when the two kindred races had been separated for perhaps above a thousand years, and the most ancient monuments of Greek literature are still more recent. Yet, notwithstanding this long separation, we might reasonably anticipate that some fragments of the primitive IndoEuropean mythology should have remained common to both the eastern and the western branches of the family; while, at the same time, we should, of course, expect that such traces of common religious conceptions would be more distinctly perceptible in the older than in the more recent literary productions of the several peoples. And such, in point of fact, turns out to be the case. The mythology of the Veda veda; by Professor Weber, and by Drs. Kuhn and Bühler, etc. etc. The substance of some of the following sections is repeated or condensed in a paper which I read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1864. See the Transactions of that Society, vol. xxiii. part iii. pp. 547 ff. |