650 MR J. MUm ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF THE RIGVEDA. 



natural objects governed by particular gods, and sometimes as themselves deities 

 who generate and control other beings. 



The varieties and discrepancies which are in this way incident to all nature- 

 worship are, in the case of the Vedic mythology, augmented by the number of 

 the poets by whom it was moulded, and the length of time during which it con- 

 tinued in process of formation. The Rigveda consists of more than a thousand 

 hymns, composed by successive generations of poets during a period of many 

 centuries. The authors of these hymns give expression not only to the notions of 

 the supernatural world which they had inherited from their ancestors, but also 

 to their own new conceptions. In that early age the imaginations of men were 

 peculiarly open to impressions from without ; and in a country like India, where 

 the phenomena of nature are often of the most striking description, such specta- 

 tors could not fail to be overpowered by their influence. The creative faculties of 

 the poets would thus be stimulated to the highest pitch. In the starry sky in 

 the dawn, in the morning sun scaling the heavens, in the bright clouds floating 

 across the air and assuming all manner of magnificent and fantastic shapes, in 

 the thunder, lightning, rain and tempest, they beheld the presence and agency of 

 different divine powers, propitious or angry. In the hymns composed under any 

 such influences, the authors would naturally ascribe a peculiar or exclusive 

 importance to the deities by whose energy the phenomena appeared to have been 

 produced, and would celebrate their praises with proportionate fervour. Other 

 poets might attribute the same natural appearances to the action of other deities, 

 whose greatness they, in like manner, would extol; while others again would 

 devote themselves to the service of some other god, whose working they seemed 

 to witness in some other department of creation. In this way, while the same 

 traditional divinities were acknowledged by all, the power, dignity, and functions 

 of each several god might be differently estimated by different poets, or, perhaps, 

 by the same poet, according to the external influence by which he was awed or 

 inspired on each occasion. In such circumstances, it need not surprise us if one 

 particular power or deity is in one place put above, and in another place sub- 

 ordinated to, some other god ; is sometimes regarded as the creator, sometimes as 

 the created. This is illustrated in the case of the first Vedic divinities, to whom 

 I shall refer — viz., Heaven and Earth. 



Dyaus and. Prithivi. 



It has been observed by a recent French writer, that " the marriage of Heaven 

 and Earth forms the foundation of a hundred mythologies." * According to the 

 Theogony of Hesiod (116 ff.), the first thing that arose out of chaos was "the 

 broad-bosomed Earth, the firm abode of all things." She in her turn "produced 

 the starry Heaven (Ouranos), co-extensive with herself, to envelope her on every 



* Albert Reville, Essais dc Critique Religieuse, p. 383. 



