MR J. MUIR ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF THE RIGVEDA. 549 



find in any other literature whatever. From their higher antiquity, these Indian 

 hymns are also fitted to throw light on the meaning of a few points of the Greek 

 system which were before obscure. Thus, as we shall see, the Indian Dyaus (sky, 

 or heaven) explains the original meaning of the Greek Zeus, and the Sanskrit 

 Varuna gives a clue to the proper signification of Ouranos. 



As in my former paper I stated the grounds on which the Vedic hymns are 

 assumed to have been composed at a period considerably more than a thousand 

 years before our era, I shall here take their great antiquity for granted, and pro- 

 ceed to give some account of their cosmogony and mythology. 



To a simple mind, reflecting in the early ages of the world with awe and 

 wonder on the origin of all things, various solutions of the mystery might 

 naturally present themselves. Sometimes the production of the existing universe 

 would be ascribed to physical, and at other times to spiritual, powers. On the 

 one hand, the speculator, perceiving light and beauty emerge slowly every 

 morning out of a gloom in which all objects had, shortly before, appeared to be 

 confounded, might conceive that in like manner the brightness and order of the 

 world around him had sprung necessarily out of an antecedent night in which 

 the elements of all things had existed together in undistinguishable chaos. Or, 

 on the other hand, contemplating the results effected by human energy and 

 design, and arguing from the less to the greater, or, rather, impelled by an 

 irresistible instinct to create other beings bearing his own likeness, but endowed 

 with higher powers, he might feel that the well-ordered frame of nature could 

 not possibly have sprung into being from any blind necessity, but must have 

 been the work of a conscious and intelligent will. In this stage of thought, 

 however, before the mind had risen to the conception of one supreme creator and 

 governor of all things, the various departments of nature were apportioned 

 between different divinities, each of whom was imagined to preside over his 

 own special domain. But these domains were imperfectly defined. One blended 

 with another, and might thus be subject in part to the rule of more than one 

 deity. Or, according to the various relations under which they were regarded, 

 these several provinces of the creation might be subdivided amongst a plurality of 

 divinities, or varying forms of the same divinity. These remarks might be illus- 

 trated by numerous instances drawn from the Vedic mythology. In considering 

 the literary productions of this same period, we further find that as yet the differ- 

 ence between mind and matter was but imperfectly conceived, and that although 

 in some cases the distinction between some particular province of nature and the 

 deity who was supposed to preside over it was clearly discerned, yet in other 

 instances the two things were confounded, and the same visible object was at 

 , different times regarded diversely as being (1) either a portion of the inanimate 

 universe, or as (2) an animated being and a cosmical power. Thus in the Vedic 

 hymns the sun, the sky, and the earth are severally considered sometimes as 



