changing colors like a suitor, equally beautiful on all sides, he presents to all sides his front. All-searching is his beam, the gleaming of his light, R. V. I. 143. 3. They would describe the wind (Vāta) and adore him and say "In what place was he born, and from whence comes he? His rushing sound we hear-what his appearance, no one?." R. V. X. 168. 3, 4. It was the forces of nature and her manifestations, on earth here, the atmosphere around and above us, or in the Heaven beyond the vault of the sky that excited the devotion and imagination of the Vedic poets. Thus with the exception of a few abstract gods of whom we shall presently speak and some dual divinities, the gods may be roughly classified as the terrestrial, atmospheric, and celestial. Polytheism, Henotheism and Monotheism. The plurality of the Vedic gods may lead a superficial enquirer to think the faith of the Vedic people polytheistic. But an intelligent reader will find here neither polytheism nor monotheism but a simple primitive stage of belief to which both of these may be said to owe their origin. The gods here do not preserve their proper places as in a polytheistic faith, but each one of them shrinks into insignificance or shines as supreme according as it is the object of adoration or not. The Vedic poets were the children of nature. Every natural phenomenon excited their wonder, admiration or veneration. The poet is struck with wonder that "the rough red cow gives soft white milk." The appearance or the setting of the sun sends a thrill into the minds of the Vedic sage and with wonder-gazing eyes he exclaims: "Undropped beneath, not fastened firm, how comes it That downward turned he falls not downward? The guide of his ascending path,—who saw it1?” R. V. IV. 13. 5. The sages wonder how "the sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling it." The minds of the Vedic The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 35. 2 lbid. p. 38. V people as we find in the hymns were highly impressionable and fresh. At this stage the time was not ripe enough for them to accord a consistent and well-defined existence to the multitude of gods nor to universalize them in a monotheistic creed. They hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed them or filled them with gratefulness and joy by its beneficent or aesthetic character, and adored it. The deity which moved the devotion or admiration of their mind was the most supreme for the time. This peculiar trait of the Vedic hymns Max Müller has called Henotheism or Kathenotheism: "a belief in single gods, each in turn standing out as the highest. And since the gods are thought of as specially ruling in their own spheres, the singers, in their special concerns and desires, call most of all on that god to whom they ascribe the most power in the matter,-to whose department if I may say so, their wish belongs. This god alone is present to the mind of the suppliant; with him for the time being is associated everything that can be said of a divine being;-he is the highest, the only god, before whom all others disappear, there being in this, however, no offence or depreciation of any other god1." "Against this theory it has been urged," as Macdonell rightly says in his Vedic Mythology, "that Vedic deities are not represented 'as independent of all the rest,' since no religion brings its gods into more frequent and varied juxtaposition and combination, and that even the mightiest gods of the Veda are made dependent on others. Thus Varuna and Surya are subordinate to Indra (I. 101), Varuna and the Asvins submit to the power of Viṣṇu (1. 156)....Even when a god is spoken of as unique or chief (eka), as is natural enough in laudations, such statements lose their temporarily monotheistic force, through the modifications or corrections supplied by the context or even by the same verse"." "Henotheism is therefore an appearance," says Macdonell, "rather than a reality, an appearance produced by the indefiniteness due to undeveloped anthropomorphism, by the lack of any Vedic god occupying the position of a Zeus as the constant head of the pantheon, by the natural tendency of the priest or singer in extolling a particular god to exaggerate his greatness and to ignore other gods, and by the 1 The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 27. 2 See Ibid. p. 33. See also Arrowsmith's note on it for other references to Henotheism. 3 Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, pp. 16, 17. growing belief in the unity of the gods (cf. the refrain of 3, 35) each of whom might be regarded as a type of the divine"." But whether we call it Henotheism or the mere temporary exaggeration of the powers of the deity in question, it is evident that this stage can neither be properly called polytheistic nor monotheistic, but one which had a tendency towards them both, although it was not sufficiently developed to be identified with either of them. The tendency towards extreme exaggeration could be called a monotheistic bias in germ, whereas the correlation of different deities as independent of one another and yet existing side by side was a tendency towards polytheism. Growth of a Monotheistic tendency; Prajapati, Viśvakarma. This tendency towards extolling a god as the greatest and highest gradually brought forth the conception of a supreme Lord of all beings (Prajāpati), not by a process of conscious generalization but as a necessary stage of development of the mind, able to imagine a deity as the repository of the highest moral and physical power, though its direct manifestation cannot be perceived. Thus the epithet Prajapati or the Lord of beings, which was originally an epithet for other deities, came to be recognized as a separate deity, the highest and the greatest. Thus it is said in R. V. x. 1212: In the beginning rose Hiranyagarbha, Born as the only lord of all existence. This earth he settled firm and heaven established: What god shall we adore with our oblations? Who gives us breath, who gives us strength, whose bidding All creatures must obey, the bright gods even; Whose shade is death, whose shadow life immortal: What god shall we adore with our oblations? Who by his might alone became the monarch Of all that breathes, of all that wakes or slumbers, Of all, both man and beast, the lord eternal: What god shall we adore with our oblations? Macdonell's Vedic Mythology, p. 17. 2 The Rigveda, by Kaegi, pp. 88, 89. Similar attributes are also ascribed to the deity Viśvakarma (All-creator)'. He is said to be father and procreator of all beings, though himself uncreated. He generated the primitive waters. It is to him that the sage says, Who is our father, our creator, maker, Who every place doth know and every creature, By whom alone to gods their names were given, To him all other creatures go to ask him2. R. V. x. 82. 3. Brahma. The conception of Brahman which has been the highest glory for the Vedanta philosophy of later days had hardly emerged in the Rg-Veda from the associations of the sacrificial mind. The meanings that Sāyaṇa the celebrated commentator of the Vedas gives of the word as collected by Haug are: (a) food, food offering, (b) the chant of the sama-singer, (c) magical formula or text, (d) duly completed ceremonies, (e) the chant and sacrificial gift together, (f) the recitation of the hotṛ priest, (g) great. Roth says that it also means "the devotion which manifests itself as longing and satisfaction of the soul and reaches forth to the gods." But it is only in the Satapatha Brāhmaṇa that the conception of Brahman has acquired a great significance as the supreme principle which is the moving force behind the gods. Thus the Śatapatha says, "Verily in the beginning this (universe) was the Brahman (neut.). It created the gods; and, having created the gods, it made them ascend these worlds: Agni this (terrestrial) world, Vāyu the air, and Sūrya the sky....Then the Brahman itself went up to the sphere beyond. Having gone up to the sphere beyond, it considered, 'How can I descend again into these worlds?' It then descended again by means of these two, Form and Name. Whatever has a name, that is name; and that again which has no name and which one knows by its form, 'this is (of a certain) form,' that is form: as far as there are Form and Name so far, indeed, extends this (universe). These indeed are the two great forces of Brahman; and, verily, he who knows these two great forces of Brahman becomes himself a great force'. In another place Brahman is said to be the ultimate thing in the Universe and is identified with Prajapati, Purușa and Prāṇa 1 See The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 89, and also Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. IV. pp. 5-11. 'Kaegi's translation. * See Eggeling's translation of Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa S. B. E. vol. XLIV. pp. 27, 28. II] Sacrifice; the First Rudiments of the Law of Karma 21 (the vital air1). In another place Brahman is described as being the Svayambhu (self-born) performing austerities, who offered his own self in the creatures and the creatures in his own self, and thus compassed supremacy, sovereignty and lordship over all creatures. The conception of the supreme man (Purușa) in the Rg-Veda also supposes that the supreme man pervades the world with only a fourth part of Himself, whereas the remaining three parts transcend to a region beyond. He is at once the present, past and future. Sacrifice; the First Rudiments of the Law of Karma. It will however be wrong to suppose that these monotheistic tendencies were gradually supplanting the polytheistic sacrifices. On the other hand, the complications of ritualism were gradually growing in their elaborate details. The direct result of this growth contributed however to relegate the gods to a relatively unimportant position, and to raise the dignity of the magical characteristics of the sacrifice as an institution which could give the desired fruits of themselves. The offerings at a sacrifice were not dictated by a devotion with which we are familiar under Christian or Vaisnava influence. The sacrifice taken as a whole is conceived as Haug notes "to be a kind of machinery in which every piece must tally with the other," the slightest discrepancy in the performance of even a minute ritualistic detail, say in the pouring of the melted butter on the fire, or the proper placing of utensils employed in the sacrifice, or even the misplacing of a mere straw contrary to the injunctions was sufficient to spoil the whole sacrifice with whatsoever earnestness it might be performed. Even if a word was mispronounced the most dreadful results might follow. Thus when Tvastr performed a sacrifice for the production of a demon who would be able to kill his enemy Indra, owing to the mistaken accent of a single word the object was reversed and the demon produced was killed by Indra. But if the sacrifice could be duly performed down to the minutest detail, there was no power which could arrest or delay the fruition of the object. Thus the objects of a sacrifice were fulfilled not by the grace of the gods, but as a natural result of the sacrifice. The performance of the rituals invariably produced certain mystic or magical results by virtue of which the object desired 1 See S. B. E. XLIII. pp. 59, 60, 400 and XLIV. p. 409. 2 See Ibid. XLIV. p. 418. 3 R. V. x. 90, Puruşa Sūkta. |