chase away hence the most unlucky. Do thou, Jatavedas, retain for us those which are fortunate. 4. Thus I divide them like cows standing upon barren ground. May those Lakshmīs which are auspicious rest here. Those which are unlucky I destroy." (The expression punya Lakshmi occurs also in A.V. xii. 5, 6.) In the Vāj. S. xxxi. 22 (S'riś cha te Lakshmiś cha patnyau), Srī and Lakshmi are said to be the two wives of Aditya, according to the commentator's explanation. In the Satap. Br. xi. 4, 3, 1, Srī is described as issuing forth from Prajapati when he was performing intense austerity, with a view to the creation of living beings. Beholding her then standing resplendent and trembling, 520 the gods were covetous of her, and proposed to Prajapati that they should be allowed to kill her, and appropriate her gifts. He replied that she was a female, and that males did not generally kill females. They should therefore take from her her gifts without depriving her of life. In consequence, Agni took from her food; Soma, kingly authority; Varuna, imperial authority; Mitra, martial energy; Indra, force; Brihaspati, priestly glory; Savitri, dominion; Pushan, splendour; Sarasvati, nourishment; and Tvashtri, forms. Sri then complained to Prajapati that they had taken all these things from her. He told her to demand them back from them by sacrifice (Prajapatir vai prajāḥ sṛijamāno 'tapyata | täsmät śrāntāt tepānāt S'rīr udakrāmat | sā dīpyamānā bhrājamānā lelāyanti atishṭhat | tām dīpyamānām bhrājamānāṁ lelāyantīm devāḥ abhyadhyāyan | 2. Te Prajāpatim abruvan "hanāma imām ā idam asyāḥ dadāmahai" iti | sa ha uvācha “strī vai eshā yat Sriḥ | na vai striyam ghnanti uta tvā asyāḥ jīvantyāḥ eva ādadata" iti | 3. Tasyāḥ Agnir annādyam ādatta Somo rājyam Varuṇaḥ sāmrājyam Mitraḥ kshatram Indro balam Brihaspatir brahmavarchasam Savitā rāshṭram Pūshā bhagam Sarasvati pushțim Tvashļā rūpāṇi | 4. Sā Prajāpatim abravīt "ā vai me idam adishata" iti | sa ha uvācha "yajnena enān punar yachasva" iti). 520 Lelayanti. As fixing the sense of this word Professor Aufrecht refers me to S'atap. Br. p. 136; Brihad Aranyaka Up. p. 737; Mundaka Up. pp. 274, 276; and S'vetasvatara Up. p. 332. 350 SECTION XXI. PROGRESS OF THE VEDIC RELIGION TOWARDS ABSTRACT In a passage which I have already quoted above (p. 8), Yāska, the author of the Nirukta, informs us (vii. 5) that previous writers of the school to which he himself belonged (the Nairuktas) reduced the deities mentioned in the Vedas to three, viz., "Agni, whose place is on the earth; Vayu or Indra, whose place in the air; and Surya, whose place is in the sky;" and asserted that "these deities severally receive many appellations in consequence of their greatness, or of the diversity of their functions, as the names of hotṛi, adhvaryu, brahman, and udgātṛi, are applied to one and the same person [according to the particular sacrificial office which he happens to be fulfilling]." In the preceding section (vii. 4) Yāska had, however, declared that, in reality, "owing to the greatness of the deity, the one Soul is celebrated as if it were many. The different gods are separate members of the one Soul. And some say that the rishis address their praises according to the multiplicity of natures in the [celestial] existences. And from the universality of their nature the gods are mutually produced from each other, and possess the natures of one another (see R.V. x. 7, 4 f. above, p. 48, and Nir. xi. 23, quoted in the 4th vol. of this Work, p. 11); they are produced from works; they are produced from soul. It is soul that is their chariot, soul their horses, soul their weapon, soul their arrows; soul is a god's all" 622 (māhātmyād devatāyāḥ ekaḥ ātmā bahudhā stūyate | ekasya ātmano 'nye devāḥ pratyangäni bhavanti | api cha sattvānām prakṛiti-bhūmabhir ṛishayaḥ stuvanti ity āhuḥ | prakṛitisārvanāmnyāch cha itaretara-janmāno bhavanti itaretara-prakṛitayaḥ 521 In various parts of the translations occurring in this section I received valuable assistance from Professor Aufrecht. 522 This passage is quoted at length in the 4th vol. of this Work, pp. 131-136. karmajanmānaḥ ātmajanmānaḥ | ātmā eva eshām ratho bhavaty ātmā aśvāḥ ātmā āyudham ātmā ishavaḥ ātmā sarvam devasya). These, however, are the views of men who lived after the compilation of the Brāhmaṇas, at a period when reflection had long been exercised upon the contents of the hymns, and when speculation had already made considerable advances. In the oldest portions of the hymns themselves we discover few traces of any such abstract conceptions of the Deity. They disclose a much more primitive stage of religious belief. They are, as I have already remarked, the productions of simple men who, under the influence of the most impressive phenomena of nature, saw everywhere the presence and agency of divine powers, who imagined that each of the great provinces of the universe was directed and animated by its own separate deity, and who had not yet risen to a clear idea of one supreme creator and governor of all things (pp. 5 f.). This is shown, not only by the special functions assigned to particular gods, but in many cases by the very names which they bear, corresponding to those of some of the elements or of the celestial luminaries. Thus, according to the belief of the ancient rishis, Agni was the divine being who resides and operates in fire, Surya the god who dwells and shines in the sun, and Indra the regent of the atmosphere, who cleaves the clouds with his thunderbolts and dispenses rain. While, however, in most parts of the Rig-veda, we not only find that such gods as Agni, Indra, and Surya are considered as distinct from one another, but that various other divinities, more or less akin to these, but thought of as fulfilling functions in some respects distinguishable from theirs (such as Parjanya, Vishņu, Savitṛi, Pūshan, etc.) are represented as existing along side of them, there are other hymns in which a tendency to identification is perceptible, and traces are found of one uniform power being conceived to underlie the various manifestations of divine energy. Thus in the texts quoted in a former section (pp. 206 ff.), Agni is represented as having a threefold existence, by which may be intended, first, in his familiar form on earth; secondly, as lightning in the atmosphere; and thirdly, as the sun in the heavens. In other passages, where the same god is identified with Vishnu, Varuna, Mitra, etc. (see p. 219), it is not clear whether this identification may not arise from a desire to magnify Agni rather than from any idea of his essential oneness with other deities with whom he is connected (see also R.V. i. 141, 9; v. 3, 1 f.; v. 13, 6). In another hymn, iv. 42, 3, too, where Indra appears to be represented as the same with Varuna (aham Indro Varunaḥ, etc.; compare the context), the design of the writer may have been to place the former god on a footing of equality with the latter. There are, however, other passages in the earlier books of the Rig-veda which suffice to show that the writers had begun to regard the principal divinities as something more than mere representatives or regents of the different provinces of nature. As I have already shown (pp. 61 ff., 98 ff., 158, 163 f., 214 f.), Varuna, Indra, Surya, Savitri, and Agni are severally described (in strains more suitable to the supreme deity than to subaltern divinities exercising a limited dominion) as having formed and as sustaining heaven and earth, and as the rulers of the universe; 523 and Varuna, in particular, according to the striking representation of the hymn preserved in the A.V. (iv. 16) (though this composition may be of a somewhat later date), is invested with the divine prerogatives of omnipresence and omniscience. Although the recognized co-existence of all these deities is inconsistent with the supposition that their worshippers had attained to any clear comprehension of the unity of the godhead, and although the epithets denoting universal dominion, which are lavished upon them all in turn, may be sometimes hyperbolical or complimentary-the expressions of momentary fervour, or designed to magnify a particular deity at the expense of all other rival objects of adoration,-yet these descriptions no doubt indicate enlarged and sublime conceptions of divine power, and an advance towards the idea of one sovereign deity. When once the notion of particular gods had become expanded in the manner just specified, and had risen to an ascription of all divine attributes to the particular object of worship who was present for the time to the mind of the poet, the further step would speedily be taken of speaking of the deity under such new names as Viśvakarman and Prajapati, appellations which do not designate any limited function connected with any single department of nature, but the more general and abstract notion of divine power operating in the production and government of the universe. It is, perhaps, in names such as these that we may discover the point 523 The same functions are ascribed to Vishnu and to Rudra. See the 4th vol. of this Work, pp. 84 and 338. of transition from polytheistic to monotheistic ideas. Both these two terms, which ultimately came to designate the deity regarded as the creator, had been originally used as epithets of Indra and Savitṛi, in the following passages :—R.V. iv. 53, 2, "Savitri, the supporter of the sky and the lord of creatures" (divo dhartta bhuvanasya prajāpatiḥ).524 viii. 87, 2, "Thou, Indra, art most powerful; thou hast caused the sun to shine; thou art great, the universal architect, and possessest all godlike attributes" (tvam Indra abhibhūr asi tvam sūryam arochayaḥ | viśvakarmā viśvadevo mahān asi).525 (1) Texts of a more decidedly monotheistic or pantheistic character. I shall now adduce those passages of the Rig-veda in which a monotheistic or a pantheistic tendency is most clearly manifested. Of some of these texts I shall only state the substance, as I have formerly treated of them in detail elsewhere. The following verse from a long hymn of an abstruse and mystical character (i. 164, 46, as already quoted in p. 219, note), though considered by Yaska (Nir. vii. 18) to have reference to Agni, and by Katyāyana and Sāyaṇa (who, however, also quotes Yaska's opinion) to have Surya in view, may nevertheless be held to convey the more general idea that all the gods, though differently named and represented, are in reality one—πολλῶν ὀνομάτων μορφὴ μία: “ They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni; and (he is) the celestial, wellwinged Garutmat. Sages name variously that which is but one: they call it Agni, Yama, Matariśvan." 526 (See Colebrooke's Essay, i. 26 f.; Weber's Ind. Stud. v. p. iv.) 21 So, too, Soma is called prajapati, "lord of creatures" (R.V. ix. 5, 9). 525 So, too, in R.V. x. 170, 4, Surya is called viśvakarman and viśvadevyavat, and Savitri is styled visvadeva in v. 82, 7, see above, p. 164. Svayambhu, "the selfexistent," occcurs as an epithet of Manyu (personified Wrath) in R.V. x. 83, 4. See below the sub-section on Käla, Time. 526 To the same effect is another text, R.V. x. 114, 5: Suparṇam viprāḥ kavayo vachobhir ekam santam bahudhā kalpayanti | "The wise in their hymns represent under many forms the well-winged (deity), who is but one." Somewhat in the same way it is said, A.V. xiii. 3, 13 (already quoted in p. 219, note): "Agni becomes in the evening Varuna (the god of night), and Mitra, when rising in the morning. Becoming Savitṛi, he moves through the atmosphere, and becoming Indra, he burns along the middle of the sky." In xiii. 4, 1 ff., Savitri is identified with a great many other deities. The words asya devasya .... vayāḥ Vishnoḥ, in |