DUALISM OF BRAHMANICAL AND ZOROASTRIAN PHILOSOPHERS. 19 
are not, to my mind, contests between good and evil. Now, in the 
literature of the Parsis, you have it that this Indra himself became 
a demon, and that the followers of Zerdusht or Zoroaster, as we 
call him, styled Indra a demon; but I do not think, so far as I can 
tell, that the Vedic Indians retaliated and called any of his wor- 
shippers demons. I think, so far as I can see, the earliest Vedic 
conceptions were monotheistic. I have spent some years in the 
study of what I conceive to be a statement of the successive stages 
of the development of the Vedic religion, as described, not by 
modern students of the “Science of Religion,” but by the very 
Vedic Rishis or “‘ Seers” themselves. The Author well knows the 
passage of the Vedic story I am about to refer to, and the hymns 
of the Rig-Veda embodied therein. It occurs in the Aitareya 
Brahmana—which is the ritual portion of the Rig-Veda—and is 
there called “The Story of Sunahgepha.” The greatest im- 
portance was attached to it by its authors, it having been ordered 
to be related at the Coronation of Kings, occupying in such 
ceremonies a position and a ritual importance exactly correspond- 
ing to the formal presentation of the Holy Scriptures at our own 
Coronation ceremonies at Westminster. Ido not think any of our 
learned scholars have yet commented upon the story in this, its 
very important original aspect. (I have spent some time on it, 
and hope shortly to present the result of my work to the public.) 
Certainly no one has as yet construed the sequence of Vedic 
hymns attributed to the authorship of Sunahgepha and linked 
together, as in a chain, by the incidents of that wonderful and 
beautiful story. To make myself intelligible, I must, as briefly as 
possible, relate the main incidents leading up to these hymns, 
which consist of a hundred Rig-Veda verses. A certain king, 
Havischandra, had been required by Varuna to sacrifice his son. 
After many delays his son flies to the forest to avoid being 
sacrificed, and there, under Divine guidance, finds a youthful 
Brahman, Sunahégepha, who accompanies him back to his father, and 
who submits to be a vicarious sacrificial victim. I will not stop here 
to even touch upon the many thoughts arising out of this incident, 
but hasten to those which immediately touch the subject of the 
paper read. When Sunahgepha is bound to the sacrificial post, 
and the moment arrives for his immolation, he—whom I say the 
authors of the story intended to typify doomed humanity—ex- 
claims, “‘I will seek refuge with the Devas.” We know that this 
word—literally “the shinings,” or ‘“‘the shining ones ’’—involves 
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