MR J. MUIR ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF THE RIGVEDA. 553 



(and though the words seem to be meant as eulogistic of Heaven and Earth, they 

 also affirm their creation), " He was the most skilful of all the skilful gods, who 

 produced, who meted out, Heaven and Earth, and established them with unde- 

 caying supports." In other places, Heaven and Earth are said to bow down, to 

 tremble, to be disturbed, at the presence of particular deities. In several hymns 

 we find various speculations about their origin. One as to their respective priority 

 has been quoted above. In another passage (x. 31, 7), the poet asks — " What was 

 the forest, what was the tree, from which they fashioned Heaven and Earth ? " 

 In another hymn (x. 81, 3), the creation of the worlds is ascribed to the sole 

 agency of the great Architect Visvakarman, who is also (x, 82, 3) called the 

 father, the generator, the disposer, who knows all spheres and worlds, and gave 

 names to the gods; but here, too, the same question is asked, as to whence 

 the wood came of which Heaven and Earth were constructed, and other ques- 

 tions are put, which show the sense of awe and mystery with which the poet was 

 oppressed. 



Elsewhere (in a hymn, x. 129, quoted in the paper which I read before the 

 Society last year), it is said that formerly there was neither non-existence nor 

 existence, neither death nor immortality, neither night nor day. Nothing existed 

 but the One, in whom love or desire arose, which was the first germ of mind,* 

 and led to all further development. " Who can tell " (the poet proceeds) " whence 

 this creation arose ? The gods are subsequent to its production : Who then knows 

 whence it sprang ? He who in the highest heaven is its ruler, he knows, or per- 

 haps not even he." 



The Vedic Gods in general. 



The gods (to whom I now pass) are sometimes said to be thirty-three in 

 number, eleven belonging to each of the three spheres into which the universe is 

 usually divided in the Rigveda, Heaven, Earth, and the region intermediate be- 

 tween the two. As we have already seen, these deities are occasionally described as 

 being the progeny of Heaven and Earth ; and in the passage just quoted, they are 

 expressly afiirmed to have come into existence subsequently to the creation of the 

 world. In the Rigveda they are constantly spoken of as immortal ; but in the 

 later mythology, at least, their immortality is regarded as merely relative, since 



* The part here assigned to love or desire (Kama), in the creation, corresponds, as the classical 

 scholar will have noticed, to the position of Eros in the Greek mythology. Hesiod (Theog. 120) 

 makes this deity coeval with Gaia and Tartarus, and prior to Ouranos. (See " Smith's Diet, of Greek 

 and Roman Biogr. and Myth." under the art. Eros, and the passages of Aristotle, Plato, and Aristo- 

 phanes, there referred to.) In the Satapatha Brahmana, and other similar works, the creative acts 

 of Prajapati are constantly said to have been preceded by desire. In the Atharva Veda, Kama is 

 distinctly personified as the god of desire in general, and as of love in particular; and his darts are 

 ' there spoken of (iii. 25, 1 ff.) just as they might be by a Greek, or by a modern, poet : " I pierce 

 thee in the heart with the terrible arrow of love (Kama). May Love pierce thee in the heart, having 

 beat his shaft winged with anxiety, pointed with desire," &c. 



