126 
G. S. Leonard— The Mythic History of the God Viraj. [No. 2, 
to weep 
niwd-ao 
who ? 
chai, chi 
why ? 
chiz, chiz-ar 
niuwd-am 
wife 
woman 
ghin, zin 
ghin, kakhoi 
well 
bashand (good) 
wool 
wim 
what P 
ka, chiz, tsiz 
work 
kar 
whatever 
tsei 
to write 
nevish-an 
wheat 
zindam 
• 
Y. 
where ? 
kaiyi 
whey 
pai 
yesterday 
biyar 
white 
sufed 
you 
tama 
JV. B. —No special mark lias been put against the Persian and Arabic 
forms. 
The Mythic History of the God Viraj.—By G. S. Leonard, Assist. 
Secretary, Asiatic Society , Bengal. 
In giving an account of the god Viraj, the deity worshipped in the 
form of the universal world, and forming one of the ten supernatural beings 
in the scale of the creative agents, we have to consider him in the three¬ 
fold light of history, mythology, and theology, in all of which he makes a 
conspicuous figure in the original works of India. 
The great variety of discordant accounts found in the Puranas and 
elsewhere, regarding the genesis of Viraj and his historical and mythologi¬ 
cal traditions make it extremely difficult to form a correct and distinct idea 
of his personality, to ascribe to him a definite shape and form, to depict his 
real figure, like that of any other god in the Hindu Pantheon, and to attain 
to a knowledge of the doctrines his religion inculcates. 
Viraj, as we learn from the different accounts of his genesis, does not 
appear to have a prior or separate existence of his own apart from nature, 
to entitle him to an independent entity or personality. His body, uncon¬ 
fined by any dimensions, cannot possibly admit of any distinct shape or 
form. And the doctrine taught in the established form of his worship is 
not composed of the creed of a particular deity, nor professed by a set or 
sect of people among the numberless schisms of the Hindus, nor is it capable 
of a distinct delineation. 
So great is the confusion in the gradation of persons, as has been justly 
remarked by Moore in his Hinjlu Pantheon, that it presents us Viraj in 
different degrees of relationship to Brahma the creator. Manu mentions 
him as the offspring of the latter, when the Brahma Vaivarta Purana repre- 
