CONTRIBUTIONS TO A KNOWLEDGE OF THE COSMOGONY, MYTHOLOGY, RELIGIOUS STANFORD LIBRARY LONDON: TRÜBNER & CO., 8 AND 60, PATERNOSTER ROW, 1872. (All rights reserved.) 190934 Οὐ γὰρ οὖν οὐδὲ ἄψυχον ἀνθρώποις ὁ θεὸς ὑποχείριον· ἀπὸ τούτων δὲ τοὺς χρωμένους αὐτοις καὶ δωρουμένους ἡμῖν καὶ παρέχοντας ἀένναα καὶ διαρκὴ θεοὺς ἐνομίσαμεν, οὐχ ἑτέρους παρ' ἑτέροις οὐδὲ βαρβάρους καὶ Ἕλληνας οὐδὲ νοτίους καὶ βορείους· ἀλλ ̓ ὥσπερ ἥλιος καὶ σελήνη καὶ οὐρανὸς καὶ γῆ καὶ θάλασσα κοινὰ πᾶσιν, ὀνομάζεται δὲ ἄλλως ὑπ ̓ ἄλλων, οὕτως ἑνὸς λόγου τοῦ ταυτα κοσμοῦντος καὶ μιᾶς προνοίας ἐπιτροπευούσης, καὶ δυνάμεων ὑπουργῶν ἐπὶ πάντας τεταγμένων, ἕτεραι παρ' ἑτέροις κατὰ νόμους γεγόνασι τιμαὶ καὶ προσηγορίαι· καὶ συμβόλοις χρῶνται, καθιιρώμεν. ι μὲν ἀμυδροῖς, δι δε τρανωτέροις, ἐπὶ τὰ θεῖα τὴν νόησιν ὁδηγοῦντες οὐκ ἀκινδύνως. Ενιοι γὰρ ἀποσφαλέντες παντάπασιν εἰς δεισιδαιμονίαν ἄλισθον· οἱ δε φεύγοντας ὥσπερ ἕλος τὴν δεισιδαιμονίαν, ἔλαθον αὖθις ὥσπερ εἰς κρημνὸν ἐμπεσόντες τὴν ἀθεότητα.—Plutarch, de Iside et Osiride, section 67. [In opposition to those who represented Dionysos, the wine-god, as meaning merely wine, Hephaistos fire, Demeter corn, etc., Plutarch urges] : : "For the god is not a lifeless thing, subject to human handling and control. But from the fact that they dispose of, and bestow upon us, these objects, and preserve them to us perpetual and constant, we have considered them to be gods. And these gods are not different among different peoples, they are not Barbarian, or Hellenic, not southern or northern; but just as the sun, and the moon, and the heaven, and the earth, and the sea are common to all-though they receive different names from different races-so too, while there is but one reason that orders, and one providence that superintends, this universe, and administrative powers are set over all, different honours and appellations have been assigned to these divine beings by the laws of different nations. And symbols too are employed, some of an obscure character, by initiated persons, and others of a plainer description by others, with the view of guiding men's conceptions of divine things. But this practice is not free from danger; for some persons, deviating from the truth, have slipped into superstition, while others, seeking to avoid the marsh of superstition, have fallen into atheism as over a precipice." HERTFORD: PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS. PREFACE. IN the present volume I have reprinted, with the addition of some new materials, subsequently collected, and of the texts on which they are founded, a series of papers on the theogony, mythology, and religious ideas of the Vedic poets, and other subjects, which originally appeared in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland for 1864, and the two following years and I have appended a new section, on life and manners during the Vedic age. I have not thought it necessary to translate all the texts to which I have referred in proof of the representations I have made. To have done so would have extended the work to an unnecessary length, as numerous verses are cited for the sake of a single epithet. Some of the texts are rendered in full; but in many, perhaps most, cases I have contented myself with giving the substance of several passages of similar or identical purport. Nor have I considered it necessary to supply here any summary of the contents of the volume, such as was given in the prefaces to the third and fourth volumes, and in that to the second edition of the first volume. The summary given in the Table of Contents seems sufficiently ample to afford the reader the means of readily ascertaining what he may expect to find in the body of the work. I have tried to exhibit, in a metrical form, the substance of the ideas regarding Indra and some other deities, which are more fully illustrated in the prose sections. I should also further remark that in this volume I have attempted nothing more than to exhibit the most prominent features of the gods, such as display themselves on the surface. It must remain for some more profound and critical scholar, after maturer investigation, to penetrate more deeply into the nature and essence of the Vedic mythology, to estimate and represent it in a more philosophical spirit, to investigate the age of the different hymns, and to determine how far it may be possible to trace in them a development of the mythology, from a simpler to a more complex state, or any other modification of its character or elements, even before it began to show any tendency towards monotheism. Meanwhile, and until the subject shall have been treated in a manner more befitting its importance, the materials which I have brought together, arranged, and interpreted, will enable those students of mythology who are themselves unable to consult the originals, to form, I trust, a not inaccurate, and a tolerably complete, conception of the character and attributes of the Indian deities in the earliest form in which they are represented to us by written records. CONTENTS. (2) Antiquity and peculiarity of the Vedic mythology. (1) Heaven and Earth described as the universal parents. (2) Passages to the same effect from the classical authors. |