MR J. MUIR ON THE PRINCIPAL DEITIES OF THE RIGVEDA. 5G5 



of the Indian triad, the Destroyer, is one of the three great gods in the later 

 Indian mythology, is a deity of but subordinate importance in the hymns of the 

 Eigveda. Like most of the other gods, however, he is designated in those hymns 

 by a variety of magnificent epithets. He is self-dependent, the strongest and most 

 glorious of beings, the father of the world, cognisant of all the doings of gods and 

 men. He is described as seated in a chariot; as being himself brilliant as 

 the sun ; as arrayed in golden ornaments, and wearing braided hair ; as wielding a 

 thunderbolt ; as armed with a bow and arrows, a strong bow and fleet arrows. 

 His shafts are discharged from the sky, and traverse the earth. He is called the 

 slayer of men. His anger and his destructive bolts are frequently deprecated ; 

 but he is also represented as benevolent, gracious, easily entreated, as the source 

 of health and prosperity to man and beast. He is often described as the pos- 

 sessor of healing remedies, and is characterised as the greatest of physicians. 

 Rudra is also designated in various texts as the father of the Rudras or Maruts, 

 the class of deities last described, who rule the winds ; and from this relation we 

 might expect that he would be represented as still more eminently than they, the 

 generator of tempests and chaser of clouds. Except, however, in a small number 

 of texts, there are few distinct traces of any such agency being assigned to him. 

 The numerous vague epithets which he constantly receives would not suffice to 

 fix the particular sphere of his operation, or even to define his personality, as 

 most of them are applied to other deities. While, however, the cosmical function 

 of Rudra is thus but obscurely indicated, he is, as we have seen, described as 

 possessing other marked and peculiar characteristics. There can be little doubt, 

 though he is frequently supplicated to bestow prosperity, and addressed as the 

 possessor of healing remedies, that he is principally regarded as a malevolent deity, 

 whose destructive shafts — the source of disease and death — the worshipper strives 

 by his entreaties to avert. If this view be correct, the remedies which Rudra 

 dispenses, may signify little more than the cessation of his destroying agency.* 



Vishnu. 



Vishnu, who, at a later period, was considered as one of the class of gods 

 mentioned above, the Adityas, and who, as the second deity in the great Indian 

 triad, has cast all the other gods except Rudra, or Siva, into the shade, was not, 

 as compared with Indra or Varuna, or perhaps even with Savitri, a very promi- 

 nent object of adoration in the Vedic age. There are, however, a few hymns in 

 which he is celebrated, sometimes singly, but mostly in conjunction with Indra, 

 and also a good many detached verses in which he is mentioned. The charac- 

 teristic function by which he is repeatedly distinguished from every other god,f 



strides. 



* See Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. p. 339, f. 



t Only Indra is associated with him in two passages (vi. 69. 5 ; and vii. 99. 6) as taking vast 



