&81 



VEDA. 



VEDA. 



662 



But he does not occupy that prominent rank among Vaidik gods which 

 we might expect, and which seems to be allowed to him by Yaska. 

 It must be observed, too, that some other words which mean " sun " 

 in classical Sanskrit, especially Savitr'i, PAilian, and Aryaman are 

 likewise Adityas in Vaidik mythology ; and that Viihn'u, also is an 

 Aditya when he is identified with the sun in its three stages of rise, 

 culmination, and setting ('R'igveda,' i. 22,17). Of other Adityas more- 

 over we point out Varun'a (from vr'i " to surround," Greek, Oii/wo). 

 He is the " all-embracing heaven, the orderer and ruler of the uni verge ; 

 he established the eternal laws which govern the movements of the 

 world, and which neither immortal nor mortal may break ; ho 

 regulated the seasons ; appointed sun, moon, stars, and their courses ; 

 gave to each creature that which is peculiarly characteristic .... From 

 his station in heaven Vamn'a sees and hears everything, nothing can 

 remain hidden from him." He is said to be the divinity presiding over 

 the night, to support the light on high, and to make wide the path of 

 the sun : he grants wealth, averts evil, and protects cattle. He is fre- 

 quently invoked, together with Atitra, another Aditya, who is the 

 divinity presiding over the day, and a dispenser of water. (Wilson, 

 ' B'igveda,' i. p. xxxiv.) 



The adoration of the sun is naturally connected with that of Uikas, 

 "dawn," or rather of L'shatat, " many dawns." " She is addressed as a 

 virgin in glittering robes, who chases away the darkness, .... who 

 prepares a path for the sun, is the signal of the sacrifice, rouses all 

 beings from slumber, gives sight to the darkened, power of motion to 

 the prostrate and helpless." (Whitney, ' Journal Amur. Or. Soc.,' iii. 

 p. 322.) 



The last divinities which deserve our special attention are the two 

 Ai'wint. They are the sons of the sea, and are represented as ever 

 young and handsome, travelling in a golden, three-wheeled, triangular 

 chariot, drawn by an ass or two horses, and the precursors of the 

 dawn. They are called Dcurai, " destroyers of fever or of diseases," for 

 they are the physicians of the gods, and Ndiatya*, " never untrue." 

 Many legends are connected with their career : they brought back to a 

 father his lost child, they restored the blind to sight ; they relieved 

 one man of bis old body by giving him a new one instead ; they sup- 

 plied another with a metal leg to replace the one he had lost in battle ; 

 they assisted seafarers in their perils, and so on. They are probably 

 the two luminous points which precede the dawn ; some compare them 

 with the Dioscuri of the Greek. 



The constellations are never named as objects of worship, and 

 although the moon appears to be occasionally intended under the name 

 Soma, particularly when spoken of as scattering darkness, yet the name 

 and the adoration are in a much less equivocal manner applied to the 

 Soma-plant. (Wilson, ' R'igveda,' i. p. xxvi.) 



The great gulf which lies between this elementary worship of the 

 R'igveda and the later mythology need not be pointed out ; but it will 

 not be without interest to observe that we already meet in its poetry 

 with some of those names which assume o different a character in the 

 epic poems and the Puran'aa. Thus Rudra, the father of the Winds, 

 becomes in the later mythology another name for S'iva, who is un- 

 known to the Vaidik hymns. Their Vishn'u, a name of the Sun, and 

 one of the Adityas, is the second person of the later Hindu triad ; and 

 his epithet Trivikrama, or " he who takes three steps," which means, 

 as we have seen, the sun in its three stages, gives rise to the myth of 

 the fourth Avatara of Vishn'u, when, as a dwarf, he strides over the 

 three worlds earth, intermediate space, and heaven and compels Bali, 

 who threatened the sovereignty of Indra, to seek refuge in Tartarus. 



Krom the nature of this worship, and from the desire for food, 

 cattle, and the like, so frequently expressed in the hymns, it has some- 

 times been inferred that the condition of life as depicted in these 

 hymns was that of a nomadic and pastoral people. There can be 

 nothing more erroneous, if we look upon the actual collection of the 

 hymns as a whole ; as we did and in the present state of Sanskrit 

 philology are compelled to do when drawing the previous sketch of 

 the ancient Hindu belief. This collection, on the contrary, gives 

 abundant proof that the Hindus of the R'igveda were settled in villages 

 and towns, that they were a manufacturing people ; for weaving, the 

 melting of metallic substances, the fabrication of golden and iron 

 mails, of ornaments, and the like, are not unfrequently alluded to. It 

 is remarkable also that they were a seafaring and a mercantile people. 

 Even a naval expedition against a foreign island is mentioned in a 

 hymn (i. 116, 3). Tugra, a friend of the As'wins, we are told, " sent 

 (his son) Bhujyu to sea, as a dying man parts with liia riches ; but you 

 (Af'wins) brought him back in vessels of your own, floating over the 

 ocean, and keeping out the waters. Three nights and three days, 

 Nasatyar, have you conveyed Bhujyu in three rapid revolving cars, 

 having a hundred wheels, and drawn by six horses, along the watery 

 bed of the ocean to the shore of the sea. This exploit you achieved, 

 Aa'wins, in the ocean, where there is nothing to give support, nothing 

 to rent upon, nothing to cling to, that you brought Bhujyu, sailing in 

 a hundred-oared ship, to his father's house." We find them in pos- 

 session of musical instruments, practising medicine, computing the 

 division of time to a minute extent ; and there is sufficient evidence 

 in the hymns to show that they bad not merely laws of buying and 

 selling, but even such complicated laws of inheritance as we meet 

 with in the most advanced period of Hindu life. According to the 

 latter, for instance, a son is the heir of the paternal property, to the 



exclusion of a daughter, as she transfers her property, by way of 

 dower, to another family. But in default of a direct male heir, the 

 son of a daughter may perform the funeral rites, or, what is equi- 

 valent, inherit the paternal property, provided that the daughter be 

 appointed for such a purpose when given in marriage. (See Cole- 

 brooke's 'Digest,' 3. 161, and various authorities quoted in Gold- 

 stiicker's ' Sanskrit Dictionary,' s.v. ' AputrikA.') The same law is 

 laid down in the following verses of Rigv. iii. 31. 1. 2. (Wilson's trans- 

 lation) : " The sonless father regulating (the contract) refers to his 

 grandson (the sou) of his daughter, and relying on the efficiency of 

 the rite, honours his (son-in-law) with valuable gifts; the father, trust- 

 ing to the impregnation of the daughter, supports himself with a 

 tranquil mind. (A son) born of the body, does not transfer (paternal) 

 wealth to a sister ; he has made (her) the receptacle of the embryo 

 of the husband; if the parents procreate children (of either sex), 

 one is the performer of holy acts, the other is to be enriched (wit)) 

 gifts)." 



That so advanced a state of social life could not remain without its 

 evils and vices is obvious ; we find hymns which describe gambling, 

 which speak of robbers and thieves, of secret births, of youths asso- 

 ciating with courtesans. 



This sketch of the religious and social condition of ancient India 

 rests, as mentioned, on the supposition of the R'igveda-Sanhita having 

 always been that which it is now in fact, on the native theory of 

 the eternity of the Veda. In the beginning we quoted some passages 

 from the ' Pur&nas ' which show that these late productions of Hindu 

 religion look upon all the Vedas as created by Jlrahma ; but we also 

 pointed out that the poets of the hymns are held even by the oldest 

 authorities to be inspired seers, who received them from the deities. 

 Mr. Muir, in one of the most interesting and elaborate works of Sans- 

 krit philology, the ' Original Sanskrit Texts,' has given other and very 

 copious proof that the doctrine of the eternity of the Veda pervaded 

 the poetry and the philosophical reasoning of ancient and medieval 

 India ; and we must content ourselves with referring for further detail 

 to the third volume of this excellent record of the ' Original Texts.' 

 It may suffice therefore to add that even the differences which exist 

 between the various editions of the sacred texts were explained away 

 by an ingenious theory. It says that " the Vaidik texts got lost in the 

 several Pralayas, or destructions of the worlds ; and since each Man- 

 wantara had its own revelation, which differed only in the expression, 

 not in the sense of the Vaidik texts, the various versions represent 

 these successive revelations, which were remembered through their 

 excessive accomplishments by the R'ishis." (' Orig. Sansk. Texts,' iii. p. 

 231, 232.) In short, though according to this theory, a succession of 

 revelations is admitted by the Hindu divines, they are conceived of as 

 a reproduction of the first revelation, which comprised the whole bulk 

 of the sacred text. 



The utter improbability of an original contemporaneousness of all 

 the hymns of the R'igveda is such that a theory founded on it would 

 scarcely require a remark for the non-Brahmanic student of Hindu 

 antiquity. In reading these hymns, such a student would not fail to 

 perceive that some describe the most primitive features, and others 

 as we have shown the most complicated mechanism of social life ; 

 that in some the first bud of religious life is perceptible, while others 

 contain " the full-grown fruit of long experience in thought, or marl; 

 the end, not the beginning, of a phase of religious development.' In 

 other words, he would perceive the gradual and historical growth of that 

 oldest document of the Brahmanic creed, the R'igveda-Sanhita. But 

 even the Brahmanic student could not remain indifferent to the fact, 

 that the hymns themselves destroy this theory of the eternity of the 

 Veda, built up, as it was, in a priestly and systematisiug ago. There 

 are passages, for instance, in which the R'ishis themselves describe 

 themselves as composers or "fabricators" or "generators," not as 

 "seers" of the hymns. "This hymn," we read in one, "has been 

 made to the divine race by the sages." " Thus, O Indra," says another, 

 " have the Gotamas made for thee pure hymns; " or, " desiring wealth, 

 men have fashioned (lit. fabricated) for thee this hymn, as a skilful 

 workman (fabricates) a car ; " or, " thus have the Gr'itaamadas, desiring 

 succour, fashioned (lit. fabricated) for thee a hymn, as men make 

 roads ; " or, " the sages generated a pure hymn and a prayer to Indra; " 

 " Wise Agni Batavedas, I generate a hymn for thee, who receivest it 

 with favour ; " and so on hi numerous other instances. (Muir, 

 ' Orig. Sansk. Text*,' iii. pp. 128-140.) 



In other hymns, says Mr. Muir (Ib. p. 117), "the .... passages 

 from the R'igveda either expressly distinguish between contemporary 

 R'iehis and those of a more ancient date, or, at any rate, make reference 

 to the one or the other class. This recognition of a succession of 

 R'ishis constitutes one of the historical elements in the Veda." If this 

 succession were simply one of the poets, it might seem, from a Brah- 

 manic point of view, to be not incompatible with the theory men- 

 tioned before; but it appears in conjunction with the narration of 

 events, and thus excludes the possibility of their original cosovity. 

 " Those gods," we read, for instance, " who formerly grew through 

 reverence, were altogether blameless. They caused the dawn to rise, 

 and the sun to shine for Vftyu and the afflicted Manu ; " or, " listen to 

 S'yftvaswa pouring forth libations, in the same way as thou didst listen 

 to Atri when he celebrated sacred rites." (Comp. Muir, ' Orig. Sansk. 

 Texts,' iii. pp. 116-128.) 



