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$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter I}
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$Author{Foot Moore, George}
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$Subject{gods
hymns
god
rig-veda
varuna
indra
religion
heaven
nature
soma
see
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see
figures
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$Date{1913}
$Log{See Hindu Divinities*0080101.scf
}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of India
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter I

Religion Of The Veda

     The Aryans in India - The Hymns of the Rig-Veda - Vedic Deities - Indra,
Varuna, and Mitra - Nature Gods - Agni and Soma - Nymphs and Elves - Demons -
Worship: Priests, Sacrifice, Expiations - Magic in the Atharva-Veda - The Dead
and Their Abodes - The Beginnings of Speculation - The Philosophy of the
Upanishads - Brahman-Atman - Rebirth and Deliverance - Dualistic Philosophy -
Practical Means of Salvation.

     The peninsula of India was occupied in early times by peoples of several
ethnic and linguistic stocks, the most numerous, if not the oldest, being the
Dravidians, who now form the characteristic population of the Deccan, but once
extended farther to the north into the Panjab and the Gangetic plain.  In the
north and east of the latter region there were also Mongoloid tribes, akin to
the peoples of Nepal and the Tibetan plateau, which in time mingled with the
Dravidians.  In the second millennium before the Christian era, or perhaps in
the third, Aryan tribes began to enter India from the northwest.  The movement
was a migration in several successive waves, rather than an invasion, and
doubtless continued for several centuries.  As the Aryans pressed southward
and eastward they subjugated and enslaved the older dark-skinned natives or
forced them back before them.

     The Aryan division of the Indo-European family, before the migration, was
settled north of the Hindu-Kush.  One branch, the forefathers of the
Aryo-Indians, moving southward, made their way into the valley of the Indus,
perhaps by the river gorges of the Kabul, and thence into the Panjab, while
the branch which we know as Iranian remained in their old homes or moved
westward as far as Media and Persia.  Before the division the two branches of
the race spoke closely related dialects of the same language, and had
substantially the same primitive religion; through centuries of separation,
and in widely different surroundings, they diverged ever more widely in
character, and the development of religion, especially, took wholly different
directions.

     The Aryan invaders of India were, like their Iranian kinsmen, a hardy and
vigorous race, and the climate of the region which they first occupied was by
no means so enervating as that of the Ganges plain.  They were already beyond
the stage of pure nomads; they lived in unwalled villages, with forts on high
ground in which they could take refuge from attack.  At the head of the
several tribes were chiefs or kings, "protectors of the people," their leaders
in war.  The principal wealth of the people was in its herds of cattle, for
which the region offered wide pasture lands. Horses, which were highly prized,
were used to draw chariots, while the ordinary draught animals were oxen and
asses; flocks of sheep and goats were also kept.  Barley was cultivated; rice
seems not to have been known.

     The herds were the chief support of the people - milk fresh from the cow
or made into a mush with meal, curdled milk, butter.  Meat was an infrequent
addition to their diet, domestic animals being rarely slaughtered except in
sacrifice or on festive occasions such as weddings. Intoxicating drinks were
prepared from the juice of the soma plant mixed with milk or from grain, and
inordinate indulgence in them was not infrequent.  Trade was by barter, the
standard unit of value being the cow; ornaments of gold and silver and
precious stones were also used in exchange.  The people were fond of sport,
especially of chariot-racing and of the chase, and much addicted to gambling.
The social distinctions natural to such a society existed, but there were no
castes, nor was there a priesthood with exclusive prerogatives.  The position
of woman was freer and more honourable than in later times.  Wars with the
natives and between different Aryan tribes or confederacies were frequent; the
motive was often cattle-lifting, if we may judge from the fact that one of the
words for battle means literally, "seeking of cows."

     The earliest knowledge of this people and its ways, its civilisation and
religion, is derived from the Rig-Veda.  Veda (from the root which appears in
"wit") and Greek "knowledge," pre-eminently religious knowledge, and is
applied in later times to the whole sacred literature regarded as revealed.
The Rig-Veda is a collection of poems in ten books, comprising in all somewhat
over one thousand pieces.  Most of them are hymns of praise and prayer
addressed to particular gods or groups of gods.  Books II-VII, called the
"family books," are collections belonging to different families of priests
whose eponymous ancestor is supposed to be a famous poet of ancient times. The
seventh book, for example, is the hymn book of the Vashisthas; the third, that
of Vicvamitra and his family, and so on.  It is not improbable that these
families originally belonged to different Aryan tribes or clans.  Speaking
generally, the oldest hymns are found in the family books, while books I and X
contain the latest.  In each book the hymns are primarily arranged by the gods
to whom they are addressed; those to Agni first, next those to Indra, then
hymns to all the gods.

     The hymns of the Rig-Veda are far from being, as was thought in the first
enthusiasm of discovery, primitive poetry, or the spontaneous expression of
primitive and unsophisticated religion.  Many of them were composed by
priestly poets for princely patrons, to be recited or sung on sacrificial
occasions; not a few are uninspired and artificial productions, in set forms,
full of stereotyped phrases and the imitation of imitations. The effort to be
original without originality results in far-fetched figures and laborious
obscurity.  As belief in the god-compelling power of the word grew, a peculiar
potency was attributed to cryptic epithets and enigmatic allusions; actual
riddles are not infrequent.  For reciting the hymns, and especially for
composing new ones for great occasions, the poets expected liberal
remuneration; they laud generous patrons and often express with unblushing
frankness their desire for many cows.  There is little of deep human emotion
in these hymns and little genuine religious fervour. Yet there are among them
some of real poetic power and of elevated religious sentiment, and in the
later books several which display philosophic insight.  Even in dull hymns the
sublime phenomena of nature occasionally evoke flashes of genuine poetry.  The
poets sometimes ascribe the thoughts embodied in their verses to divine
inspiration; priestly theory in later times attributed the whole sacred
literature to revelation in the most literal sense.

     In the age of the great heresies, Jainism and Buddhism, the Rig-Veda
collection and the prose liturgical texts (Brahmanas) dependent upon it had
long enjoyed this supreme authority, and through the possession of the divine
"knowledge" the Brahman priesthood had acquired its great spiritual power.
The Brahmanas not only breathe a different religious atmosphere, but have a
different geographical horizon; they were composed in the valley of the
Ganges.  For these great changes several centuries must be allowed, and since
the heresies of the sixth century had precursors a good way further back the
round estimate of 1000 B.C. for the lower limit of the Vedic age seems rather
too low than too high.  How ancient the oldest hymns in the collection are we
have no means of judging.  The thing of importance is that all the hymns
reflect Indian surroundings and conditions, and are therefore subsequent to
the invasion and the settlement in the Panjab, and apparently separated from
it by a considerable interval of time, since not even in the earliest hymns is
there any memory of the migration.

     The picture of the Vedic religion which the Rig-Veda gives is in several
respects incomplete.  In hymns addressed to the gods we naturally find rather
allusions to the myths than detailed narrations.  A hymn like Rig-Veda, I, 32,
the glorification of Indra's victory over the dragon Vritra and the liberation
of the imprisoned waters, is a rare exception. So also of the forms of
worship: most of the hymns were composed to accompany sacrifices, but they
give no description of the rites.  Here the Brahmanas, which not only
prescribe the ceremonies with the minutest circumstantiality, but explain the
allusions in the hymns or rehearse the myths in connection with ritual, often
furnish a clew, though their age and character demand critical caution in the
use of their statements.  On the other hand, we learn from the hymns the
character of the gods to whom they are dedicated, the things which they are
desired and expected to do for their worshippers, the conditions of their
favour, and the feelings with which men approached them - matters of much
greater significance in religion than the tales about the doings of the gods
or the externals of the ritual.

     Among the gods of the Rig-Veda we find neither tribal nor local deities.
It is not improbable that in particular tribes or regions the worship of
certain gods was especially favoured, or that in the course of time, with
changing conditions, one god had to cede the pre-eminence to another, but the
indications of this are few and uncertain.  If the pantheon of the Rig-Veda is
in any degree the product of a fusion of the religions of different Aryan
tribes, that stage of the development lies far back of the age which produced
the hymns - in them it is the pantheon of the Aryan people.  The gods are in
the main the great powers of nature which affect human welfare or the objects
and phenomena in which these powers are manifested - the bright sky, the
enlivening sun, the rosy dawn, the storm which brings the longed-for rain.
These gods the Aryans had worshipped in their old seats, and these had
accompanied them in their migration to new homes, while the divinities who
were attached to certain places were necessarily left behind.

     Of course, as in all such cases, it was not the natural object or
phenomenon as such that was worshipped, but a power actuated by a will and
prompted by motives such as determine human conduct, and conceived, after the
analogies of primitive physiological psychology, as a spirit.  Even when his
name seems to identify him with a natural object, as, for example, Surya, the
sun, the god is thus in his inner nature like man, and the myths give him also
human form, and describe solar phenomena as human doings. The inseparable
association of the deity with an object in nature puts restraint, however, on
the growth of myth, which cannot in such cases get much beyond extended
metaphor, and upon the religious development, since gods grow great by being
appealed to in all sorts of need, while the functions of such "transparent"
gods are limited by their very obviousness. It is the gods whose nature and
function are not expressed in the mere utterance of their names who become
more completely anthropomorphic, and in corresponding degree their original
physical nature recedes into the background, till in the end it may be wholly
lost from view, while the human character of the god grows more distinctly
individual.

     The Vedic deities do not attain the concrete and plastic personality of
the Greek gods.  The difference is due principally to the Homeric epics, in
which the gods play their parts right manfully in a heroic but eminently human
action, while the Vedic poets are concerned with the gods only as protectors
and benefactors of their worshippers.  In this capacity their functions are
not sharply delimited; as in all other religions which have reached this
stage, the same blessings are sought from gods of the most diverse origin
without regard to their ultimate physical associations; the same laudatory and
descriptive epithets are applied to them.  The appropriation by imitative
poets of fine passages in praise of one god to adorn a hymn to another has
done much to blur the outlines of even the most distinct figures in the
pantheon.

     A native classification of the Vedic gods by one of the most esteemed
authorities divides them, according to the sphere in which their activities
are chiefly manifest, into gods of the sky, gods of the atmosphere (that is,
of the space between sky and earth), and gods of the earth; but this
distinction does not imply a difference either of rank or of religious
importance.

     The first place among the gods of the Vedic age belongs indisputably to
Indra; not far from a fourth of the hymns in the Rig-Veda are dedicated to
him, and in perhaps fifty more his praises are incidentally sung.  He leads
the Aryans in war, and gives his people the victory over the dark-skinned
natives and the demons they worship.  He is a gigantic figure, with tawny hair
and beard, who rides into battle on a chariot drawn by tawny steeds, and
wielding his peculiar weapon, the thunderbolt.  The great exploit of Indra is
the slaying of the dragon Vritra, which had shut up the waters.  Fortified in
body and soul by deep draughts of soma, Indra, with his train of Maruts,
sallies forth to the encounter, and in fierce combat smites the monster with
his thunderbolt, and lets out the pent-up waters. ^1

[Footnote 1: Rig-Veda, I, 32.  There are very many references to the myth in
the other hymns.  Another myth tells of the release of the cows imprisoned by
the Panis.]

     Indra is classed among the gods of the air, and the Vritra myth is
clearly meteorological.  Yet if we call Indra a storm-god, it must be noted
that even in this myth he is not so much the power in or behind stupendous
physical phenomena as the beneficent deity who delivers men in their need by
breaking the sore drought and letting the clouds pour down the reviving rain
and the rivers stream with water.  And it is as the heroic destroyer of the
enemy, not as the mighty god of tempest, that he becomes the national god of
the Aryans in their wars with their foes, human and demonic.  He has a heroic
capacity for food and drink, devouring the flesh of bulls by the hundred, and
draining whole tubs of soma, by which he waxes valiant in fight and renews his
strength for such great tasks as upholding earth and sky.  In a hymn of the
tenth book (119) he describes his expansive sensations and emotions when he is
full of this intoxicating beverage.  He has also a martial weakness for the
fair and gives his wife Indrani too good ground for jealousy.

     Indra is often lauded as the greatest of gods, "no being in heaven or
earth has ever equalled him." He is sometimes called "the universal monarch,"
a title more frequently bestowed on Varuna; but this does not import a
sovereignty over the other gods like that of the Homeric Zeus. The Vedic
pantheon is not, like the Olympic, a divine state with a supreme ruler upon
its throne; every god is the greatest when the hymn is addressed to him.

     A god of a wholly different type is Varuna. ^1 There are no ancient myths
which might give a clew to his origin, and the oldest interpreters were
evidently as much in the dark about it as we are; later associations and
explanations are valid, so far as they are valid at all, only for the age that
produced them.  Varuna had already in the Vedic period become so completely an
anthropomorphic god that his relation to physical nature, if any consciousness
of it survived, was no longer of any significance. Varuna is king of gods and
men, universal monarch; titles of sovereignty are oftener bestowed on him than
on any other god; it is in some sense his proper attribute.  He established
heaven and earth, and keeps them apart by his law; he makes the sun to shine
in the heaven, and appointed for him his broad highway; by his ordinance the
bright moon and the stars move through the night; the wind which resounds
through space is his breath.  He gives to nature its law, and upholds it by
his law.  He is also the upholder of the moral law: from his seat in the
highest heaven he, "the all-seeing," the "far-seeing," beholds all that is
done upon earth; his "spies," like those of an earthly ruler, take note of
men's deeds and report them to the god.  He punishes wrong-doing, and to him,
before all others, prayers for the forgiveness of sin are addressed.  The
hymns to Varuna have a moral elevation rarely attained elsewhere in the
Rig-Veda; indeed, they stand in this respect so apart that one eminent scholar
has been led to conjecture that the religion of Varuna was not an Aryan
development, but was adopted from a Semitic people.  This hypothesis is for
more than one reason untenable; but it suggests that if we knew the history we
should find that the religion had taken shape under different conditions from
that of Indra or Rudra, and perhaps among different tribes.  There are, in
fact, some indications, in the Vedas as well as in the Avesta, of a rivalry
between two types of Indo-Iranian religion, or at least two religious
tendencies. If, as seems probable, Ahura Mazda, the "Wise Lord" of the
Zoroastrian Gathas, is the same god whom we meet in the Vedas as Varuna, the
outcome of the rivalry among the Iranians was the opposite of that in India.
^1

[Footnote 1: "The one (Indra) slays the foe in battle, the other (Varuna
evermore protects the ordinances."]

[Footnote 1: See below, pp. 367 f.]

     With Varuna another god of similar character, Mitra, is often joined in
the dedication of hymns and otherwise.  Mitra is identical with the Iranian
Mithra, who is a solar deity, and in the Veda itself his attributes are at
least suitable to an original sun-god or god of light; but, as in the case of
Varuna, the physical character has been put completely in the background by
the moral.  In view of the constant coupling of Mitra and Varuna - an
association so close that only one hymn is addressed to Mitra alone - it may
with some probability be surmised that Varuna was primitively the divine sky.
In the Brahmanas Varuna is especially connected with the night, and indeed
traces of this view appear in the Rig-Veda.  Varuna and Mitra are members of a
group of deities to which the collective name Adityas, or sons of Aditi, is
given, and who are repeatedly invoked as a class; the most important of them
after the two already named, to judge by the frequency with which he is
mentioned in the Rig-Veda, is Aryaman.

     Closely associated with Varuna is Rita, Order.  The word corresponds to
the Avestan Asha, which is similarly connected with Ahura.  In the Veda, Rita
represents the order of nature, the social order, and the order of the ritual,
which are, indeed, from the Indian point of view not distinct, but aspects of
one universal order; the movements of the heavenly bodies, the regular round
of the seasons, were in some way correlated with the orderly performance of
sacrifices.  This order is usually the ordinance of Varuna; occasionally,
however, it seems to have an existence and right of its own, but is not
distinctly personified.

     The bright sky, Dyaus, is also a god.  The word is the same as the Greek
Zeus, but the god occupies no corresponding position in the Vedic religion.
No hymn is addressed to him alone; he is most frequently associated with the
divine earth, Prithivi, as the universal parents ("father heaven," "mother
earth"). ^1 Several gods are called his children, oftenest Ushas, the Dawn,
also the Acvins, Surya, the sun, and others.

[Footnote 1: The phrases occur but rarely in the Rig-Veda.]

     Ushas (cf. Aurora) is the rosy Dawn, a beautiful maiden in festal attire,
nothing loath to display her charms, who comes to meet her lover or husband,
the sun.  The personification is transparent; but the treatment is more
poetical than that of any other Vedic divinity.  With the dawn appear also the
Acvins, the twin horsemen, who are among the most prominent figures in the
Rig-Veda after Indra, Agni, and Soma.  They are glorious youths, children of
Dyaus (Heaven), brothers of Ushas, husbands of Surya (sun as female, or the
daughter of the sun), who mounts their swift car and accompanies them in their
course.  What natural object or phenomenon they originally represented is
uncertain.  The oldest native commentators made different guesses, and recent
investigators have offered others.  The association with the dawn and the sun
suggest the morning star; but why did the poets see the morning star double?
Here again the question what the Acvins were in nature is for the mythologer;
what they were in religion is not in the least obscure - they are gracious
deities who hasten to succour men in distress or perils on land or water by
their wonderful interventions.  Especially are they divine healers, who
restore sight to the blind and cure the sick and wounded.  Many miracles are
reported of them, all works of mercy and beneficence.  The parallel to the
Greek Dioskouroi can hardly be fortuitous.

     Surya is the sun which we see in the sky; he traverses the way prepared
for him by Varuna in a car drawn by swift steeds, or flies across the sky like
a great red bird; or he is the eye of Mitra and Varuna, or of Agni.  He sees
all the good and bad deeds of men.  He rouses men, and stirs them up to
perform their tasks; and drives away sickness, disease, and every evil dream -
the malign powers that do their mischief at night.

     Savitar, "the one that arouses, impels," seems to have been originally an
epithet of the sun, which being often used by itself became the name of a
distinct deity.  As the name designates a many-sided activity, not a concrete
object, Savitar had greater freedom of development than Surya.  It is perhaps
not without significance that most of the hymns to Savitar are in the family
books, while those to Surya are chiefly in the first and tenth.

     Somewhat like the relation of Savitar to Surya is that of Vayu to Vata.
Both are wind-gods; but Vata is more the physical phenomenon, while Vayu is
more the personification of the wind power; hence Vayu is a comrade of Indra,
while Vata is associated with Parjanya, the rain-god.

     The Maruts, to whom more than thirty hymns are dedicated, are also
probably wind or storm gods.  They are sons of Rudra, but the allies of Indra,
and their numerous troop follows and aids him in his dragon-slaying exploits.
They come in roaring winds, rending trees and making forests bow before them
in fear; they cover the eye of the sun with rain, and cause the mountain
streams to pour down water.

     A deity who is of only secondary importance in the Rig-Veda, but was
destined in later times to supplant the greatest of them, is Vishnu.  He
appears repeatedly in company with Indra, and is in some hymns his ally in the
combat with Vritra.  Of Vishnu's deeds that which most impressed the poets was
his "three strides," which are mentioned at least a dozen times; the epithets
wide-going, wide-striding, refer to the same thing.  But what the three
strides were is nowhere explained.  The commonest opinion makes them the
progress of a sun-god across the sky; greater probability attaches to the view
that they traverse the three divisions of the universe.  If Vishnu was
originally a sun-god, the solar features have almost entirely disappeared.

     A curious figure is Pushan, a kind of Pan in the Vedic Olympus. Instead
of a golden chariot with golden steeds, he drives a little cart drawn by
goats; the chief of his diet is porridge, and - whether it be cause or
consequence - he is toothless.  Notwithstanding this drollery, Pushan is a
deserving and respected deity, he possesses all wealth and bestows it
liberally on his worshippers.  He protects cattle, keeps them from falling
into a pit, and brings them safely home.  He knows the paths, guides men on
them, and guards wayfarers from harm by wild beasts and robbers.  He thus
becomes, like Hermes, the guide of the dead, who conducts the souls by the
distant paths of the fathers.

     Tvashtar is the divine artificer, the most skilful of craftsmen; he
forged the thunderbolt of Indra and made the cup for the gods to drink from.
He fashions the embryo in the womb and all forms of beast and man; presides
over generation, bestows offspring.  He is called universal father, for he
produced the whole world.

     One of the greatest gods in the Rig-Veda is Agni, to whom at least two
hundred hymns are dedicated - more than to any god except Indra.  Agni (ignis)
is fire in all its forms in heaven and earth, but it is as the hearth fire in
the household ritual and the three fires of the greater sacrificial ceremonies
that he has his primary religious importance. Offerings of butter are made to
him, and sacrifices to the other gods are committed to him which he conveys in
his mounting flames and smoke to their seats on high, with the praises and
prayers of the worshippers.  As sacrifice propitiates the gods and removes
guilt, and as fire purifies and expels evil influences, Agni is a god who
takes away sin and restores the sinner to favour.  In this way the moral side
of Agni's character is more developed than that of any other god save Varuna.
Agni is the priest of the gods, and in a special sense the god of the priests;
he knows all the rites and accurately performs them.  He is also a seer,
possessed of all knowledge, and begetter of wisdom in men.  He is the friend
and kinsman of men, a guest in every house; he watches over his worshippers
and protects them, driving away demons and averting hostile magic; he delivers
from all perils, and bestows prosperity, offspring, domestic welfare.

     A favourite theme of the poets is the births of Agni.  He is begotten on
earth daily when the fire is kindled with the two fire-sticks, and must,
therefore, lie hidden in the wood.  The waters - terrestrial as well as
celestial - also are the abode and origin of Agni.  In the lightning which
breaks from the streaming cloud he is born; from heaven he descends to earth
in the lightning stroke.  Finally, Agni is the sun, the great fire in heaven.
The three abodes of Agni, in heaven, among men, in the waters, his three
stations, three bodies, threefold light, are even in the Rig-Veda subject of
mystical speculation, or, more accurately, of mystifying obscurities.

     Soma, the libation to the gods, the preparation and offering of which is
the main feature of the ritual with which the Rig-Veda is connected, is also
one of the most important deities.  One whole book, the ninth, comprising one
hundred and fourteen hymns, is exclusively devoted to him. The drink of the
gods, by which they are moved to grant the requests of their worshippers, is
itself a divine power, and like all other divine powers is personified.  The
belief in its efficacy with the gods passes easily into the notion of power
over the other gods, and the way is thus opened to the foremost ranks of the
pantheon. ^1 The drink gives to the gods strength and courage, as we have seen
in the myth of Indra and the dragon; it is the draught of immortality for gods
and men.  Its worshippers exclaim: "We have drunk the soma, we have become
immortal, we have come to the light, we have found the gods; what can enmity
do to us now, and what the malice of mortal, O Immortal?" It is, therefore, a
potent medicine; Soma heals whatever is sick, making the blind to see and the
lame to walk. It is also a remedy for moral ills; it dispels sin from the
heart, destroys falsehood, and promotes truth.  As the draught gives wisdom to
men, Soma is a wise seer, who knows the races of the gods and with
intelligence surveys the creatures.

[Footnote 1: The deification of means by which good things are procured is
very common, especially sacrificial or sacramental means.]

     Soma, being the inspirer of Indra's valour, is himself a great warrior,
most heroic of heroes, fiercest of the terrible, ever victorious; he conquers
for his worshippers cows, chariots, horses, gold, heaven, water, a thousand
boons.  As sacrifice sustains the order of nature, Soma causes the sun to rise
or the dawns to shine; he generated the two worlds, created heaven and earth,
and so on.  There are in fact no limits to the potency of this divine draught.
The soma plant grew upon the mountains, but terrestrial mountains and the
cloud heights of heaven are not easily discriminated in the turgid rhetoric of
the priestly poets. ^1 From the highest heaven the eagle brought down the soma
- perhaps not the plant but the streaming rain.

[Footnote 1: Indeed the word parvata means both 'mountain' and 'cloud.']

     The use of a drink derived from the intoxicating juices of a plant mixed
with water, milk, or honey, and the offering of libations to the gods, goes
back to Indo-Iranian antiquity; the Haoma of the Avesta is identical not only
in name but in use. ^2 In post-Vedic times Soma is identified with the moon,
by what association of ideas - whether the colour of the milky mixture or the
shape of the moon, which is compared to a bowl drained by the gods each month,
or both combined - is uncertain.

[Footnote 2: See below, pp. 388 ff.]

     The gods of the Rig-Veda are friendly powers; man confides in their
good-will and rejoices in their presence.  The one exception is Rudra, a great
but terrible deity, destructive as a wild beast, the ruddy bull of heaven.
The hymns addressed to him are filled with deprecation of his deadly wrath; he
is implored not to slay his worshippers, their parents, children, men, cattle,
or horses; to avert his great malevolence and his terrible bolt; to keep from
them his cow-slaying, man-slaying missile.  In the Atharva-Veda and the
Brahmanas he is still more terrible in aspect and deed; even the gods are
afraid of his arrows lest he should destroy them, and when the other gods
attained heaven Rudra remained behind.  Under the euphemistic name Civa he
became one of the greatest gods of Hinduism.  Yet, on the other hand, he is
peculiarly a god of healing, the best of physicians, who has a thousand
remedies by virtue of which his worshipper hopes to live a hundred winters.
He is, as has already been said, the father of the Maruts, and is commonly
thought to have been originally a storm-god.  Others see him rather a god of
forests and jungle, a kind of Indian wild huntsman.

[See Hindu Divinities: The gods of the Rig-Veda are friendly powers.]

     The divine waters had an important place in the religion of the
Indo-Iranians before the separation, and maintained it in both branches of the
race; even the name "Child of Waters," Apam Napat, has been preserved in the
Avesta as well as in the Veda.  In the latter the rivers of the Panjab, on
which the prosperity of the people was largely dependent, are gods, foremost
among them the Sarasvati.  The Ganges, pre-eminently the holy river of India
in the following ages, is named only in one of the latest hymns.

     Mention must be made also of certain gods whose names show the beginnings
of priestly speculation or theological reflection, such as Brihaspati, the
praying priest among the gods, the "lord of prayer," i.e., the deified
religious formula; Vicvakarman, "the all-creating"; Prajapati, "the lord of
creatures," of whom more will be said in another connection.

     Goddesses in their own right have only a minor place in the Vedic
religion; Ushas, the Dawn, is the only one to whom many hymns are addressed,
and next to her in this respect stands Sarasvati.  There is one hymn to Night,
the sister of Dawn.  Other goddesses are Vac, deified Speech, and certain
personifications of Plenty.  The wives of the gods, such as Indrani (the
feminine of Indra), are figures - and not very prominent figures - of myth
rather than of religion.

     The gods whose praises are celebrated in the Rig-Veda thus vary widely in
nature and in religious importance; by the side of the gods, old and new, who
make up the popular pantheon and are chiefly worshipped, are found gods who
owe their importance to the ritual or theological interests of the priesthood,
and gods who are favourite figures with the poets, without having been, so far
as we can see, of corresponding prominence in worship.

     Besides the gods who have been named, there are several classes of
superhuman beings who belong not merely to the realm of mythological fancy,
but at least, in some secondary way, to religion.  Among these are the Ribhus,
to whom about a dozen hymns are dedicated, and who are frequently invited to
the sacrifice.  They are skilled artificers, who rival and outdo Tvashtar in
fashioning the drinking-vessels of the gods; they made also a wonderful car
for the Acvins; they made a cow that gave nectar for milk, and the like.  The
Apsarases were, the name implies, originally water-nymphs, but are not
restricted to the aquatic sphere.  They are beloved by the Gandharva (or the
Gandharvas), whose abode is on high, and who appears as the guardian of the
soma; but Apsarases sometimes bestow their favours on mortals, as in the story
of Urvaci and Puraravas.

     Many mythical heroes, priests, and seers of olden times - Manu, the man
who first offered sacrifice, Bhrigus and Angirases, Kutsa, the hero who fought
by Indra's side against Cushna, Atharvans, the Seven Seers, and others - are
mentioned in the hymns; some apparently forming an intermediate class between
gods and men, others men who by association with the gods become participants
in their mythical deeds.  It does not appear, however, that they were actually
worshipped with the gods.

     The powers at work in the world are not all friendly and beneficent.
There are multitudes of demons and evil spirits who, out of their own
malignity or moved thereto by malicious magic, work manifold harm to men in
their person and property.  Of these hostile powers there are several classes.
In the Atharva-Veda and later the Asuras are demons who are mythical
antagonists of the gods and enemies of men.  In the Rig-Veda the name usually
designates the gods, or a group of gods of which Varuna is the chief, as in
the Avesta Ahura is the highest god; seldom, and almost solely in the tenth
book, they are opposed to the gods and are combated by them: Indra is invoked
to scatter the godless Asuras; Agni promises to make a hymn by which the gods
shall vanquish the Asuras.  The name Dasas or Dasyus, originally the godless
dark-skinned natives of India, was probably extended to the gods they
worshipped, equally the adversaries of the Aryan invaders.  Perhaps the
reputation which inferior races often possess for superiority in magic
contributed to the belief that their deities were evil demons.  Several of
these Dasas are named individually in the Vedic mythology - Namuci, Cambara,
Cushna, and others; they appear chiefly as antagonists of the gods, and are
therefore transported, with the scene of combat, into the air; it is not
necessary to suppose that they were by nature "atmospheric demons."

     The demons who most trouble men are the Rakshases (occasionally called
Yatu, persecutory magician).  They have, or assume at will, the form of beasts
or ill-omened birds such as owls or vultures; or they are, as more commonly in
the Atharva-Veda, manlike, two-headed, four-eyed, with feet turned backward,
and the like.  They lurk about the habitations of men, especially at night and
in the dark of the moon; they invade man through all the orifices of the body,
consume his flesh, suck out his marrow, drink his blood, confuse his speech,
make him mad.  They drain the milk of his cows and devour the flesh of his
horses.  They come not singly but by families and troops - Fever with his
brother Wasting, his sister Cough, his cousin Rash.  They frequent the place
of sacrifice to defile the gifts and disturb the liturgy; to the offerings to
the manes they throng in the likeness of ancestral spirits.  Marriage,
pregnancy, childbirth are beset by demonic perils; they swarm about the dying
and haunt the house of death. The Picacas, in particular, are ghoulish devils.
For defence against these malignant powers men have recourse to counter-magic
or invoke the protection of the gods; Agni, especially, is besought to drive
them away or burn them up.

     Since the gods are - with the exception of Rudra - friendly and helpful
powers, worship has prevailingly the character of propitiation. Offerings are
made to them of things which men prize, and are accompanied by the recitation
or chanting of hymns in their honour and prayers for their favour.  These
actions are believed to please the gods, and thus to gain or maintain or
recover their good-will.  The forms of worship are known in detail only from
the Brahmanas, ritual treatises which represent a later age and exhibit a high
degree of priestly elaboration, and from the more recent manuals called
sutras; the allusions in the hymns show, however, that the characteristic
features of the Brahmanic cultus came down from Vedic times.

     There were no temples nor precincts permanently consecrated to worship.
When sacrifice was to be made, a place was set off and prepared for the
occasion and the gods invited to the feast; after the ceremony was over and
the gods had taken their departure, it was no longer holy ground. The spot
marked off for sacrifice was not consecrated to a particular god, but to a
group of gods or to all the gods.  We may recognise in these features a
survival from the nomadic state: the tribe worshipped its gods - chiefly the
great powers of nature - wherever its encampments happened to be.  Another
peculiarity of the religion which is also doubtless of ancient origin is that
there are no sacrifices by and for the people as a whole, or for the smaller
social groups - tribe, clan, village - as such; all offerings are made by
individuals.  The sacrifices of the king before setting out to battle or
foray, or upon other occasions of public interest, are, indeed, for the
benefit of his people, but in form they are private sacrifices, like all
others.