LECTURE THE THIRD.
The Prehistoric Gods.
Two prehistoric periods bearing upon Hindu religion — Scepticism about Comparative Mythology — Difficulties in the way of Comparative Mythology — Comparative Mythology and Ethnology — The myth of Cerberus — The Indo-European period — Prehistoric words for god — Father Sky and Mother Earth — The Thunderer — The Vedic Açvins, or “Horsemen,” the two Sons of Heaven — The Dioscuri in Greek mythology — The Lettish myth of the two “Sons of God” — Common kernel of the myth of the two “Sons of Heaven” — The Aryan, or Indo-Iranian period — Important religious ideas common to the two peoples — The dual gods Varuna and Mitra — Ahura Mazda and Varuna — The conception of rta, or “cosmic order” — The Adityas — Aditi, the mother of the Adityas — Mitra, a sun god — The sun, the moon, and the planets — The Adityas and Amesha Spents — Early ethical concepts among the Indo-Europeans — Varuna and Greek Ouranos (Uranus) — The origin of man — Sundry parents of man — “Father Manu” — Yama and Yami, the “Twins” — Interlacing of the myths of the first man — The human character of Manu and Yama — Yama, the god of the dead — Soma, the sacrificial drink of the gods — The myth of Soma and the Heavenly Eagle — Value of the preceding reconstructions.
THE treatment of India’s prehistoric gods takes on of itself the outer form of a chapter of Comparative Mythology. We have seen in the past that the events which preceded the migration of the Aryas into India belong to two very different prehistoric periods.[^1] One of these is the period when the Hindu and Iranian (Persian) peoples, the so-called Aryas, were still one people, a period which does not lie so very far behind the Veda itself, just behind the curtain which separates the earliest historical records of both India and Iran from the very long past which preceded both of them. This is the Indo-Iranian, or Aryan period. The second is the still remoter period of Indo-European unity; the languages, institutions, and religions of this great group of peoples permit us to assume that there was once upon a time one Indo-European people, and that this people possessed religious ideas which were not altogether obliterated from the minds of their descendants, the Indo-Europeans of historical times (Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, etc.).
It is my painful duty to report that there has been of recent years a great “slump” in the stock of this subject. In fact, some scholars, critics, and publicists have formally declared bankruptcy against the methods and results of Comparative Mythology. In the long run prehistoric reconstructions, inferences, analogies, and guesses do not find favor with certain types of mind. Of course, it is safer to restrict one’s self; to analyse and describe the history of each Indo-European people by itself; and to refrain from speculating about their connection in a remote past. Is it not better to stay at home, each trained scholar in his own philology, rather than to ride out towards points on the broad and dim horizon which bounds the more or less hypothetical Indo-European community, to chase after something that may turn out to be a mirage? So it has transpired that what bid fair once upon a time to grow into an important branch of historical science is now by some ignored, if not pooh-poohed. The writings of many great scholars during the last fifty years or more are now declared by some to be ready to be wiped off the slate. It is but fair to note that the same critics who are sceptical about Comparative Mythology are, as a rule, inclined also to doubt the explanations of myths that are restricted to a single people. It seems to be a matter of temperament, this dislike to search after origins, after final explanations, after resolving chords, as it were. Here also they prefer to treat a myth at its face value, as story, fancy, poem, and nothing more. Now all this sounds very virtuous and abstemious; does not the true spirit of research call a halt at the point where rigid mathematic certainty is at an end?
The difficulties which have beset Comparative Mythology are of various sorts: First, the unquestionable delicacy, clear to the point of fragility, of prehistoric materials. Next, the imagination of scholars who incline to such studies is prone, by the very terms of its existence, to be a little excessive. The first results of the science were so striking and fascinating that its development went on too fast, its conclusions became too hasty. May the shades of Theodor Benfey, Adalbert Kuhn, and Max Müller pardon me if I say that their almost poetic genius did at times take flight from the firm earth into sheer cloudland—“where birds can no longer fly.” Unquestionably they did compare some mythological names because of the faintest and shakiest phonetic resemblances. Intuitive fanciful explanations of the most complicated myths do to some extent masquerade as scientific results in their writings, and in the writings of the school that grew up mushroom-like about them. A science based upon vague and general resemblances of both things and words could not be otherwise than faulty both as to its details and its philosophic generalizations. In brief, Comparative Mythology suffered from the pardonably excessive zeal of its early friends. Since then the pruning knife has kept busy. At the present time this is a subject that should be handled very gingerly by all those who do not know how to winnow the chaff from the grain. But there still is Comparative Mythology, and it is here to stay.
There is yet another difficulty which should be rated at its right value, not too much and not too little. The primary object of the comparative mythology of the Indo-European peoples is to collect, compare, and sift the religious beliefs of these peoples, so as to determine what they owned as common property before their separation. What now, we hear it frequently asked, about the strange peoples, not Indo-European, nor Aryan, who share these beliefs with the Indo-Europeans or have similar beliefs? Without question, in the earlier stages of the science, similarities which were independent products in different quarters, due to the similar endowment of the human mind, were confused with genetic similarities. By genetic similarities I mean such similarities as transmitted mythological conceptions which were already in vogue among the prehistoric Indo-Europeans, so that they were continued, with later modifications, by the separate branches of the Indo-European peoples. Should not, therefore, this entire subject be handed over to those broader students of Ethnology who investigate human customs, institutions, and beliefs all over the world? Does not the entire subject of the origin and development of religions belong to Ethnology rather than Philology?
For instance, the Indo-Europeans make much of the worship of the sun as a supreme being. But so do the Iroquois Indians, and many other savage or semi-barbarous peoples. It is indeed true, and it is an important truth, that the human race, endowed as it is essentially alike, is liable anywhere and at any time to incorporate in its beliefs this most imposing and deifiable visible object in all nature, the sun, the source of light and heat, seasons and vegetation. This is the simple ethnological fact. The fact in Indo-European Comparative Mythology is a different one: it is a historical fact. In the early period of each Indo-European people heaven, its agents and powers, including of course the sun, were, as we know on excellent authority, worshipped or deified. We are therefore to-day, as formerly, securely intrenched in the conviction that the worship of heaven and the visible heavenly phenomena, more or less personalised, did in fact form the common kernel of Indo-European religion. Now do I fail to see what the beliefs of other peoples, not Indo-European, along the same line, have to do with this particular case, except to show that the Indo-Europeans were rational beings, and that all the rest of the peoples who worship the sun are, from their primitive point of view, also rational beings.
I have devoted of recent years considerable effort to the statement and explanation of the myth of Cerberus, the dog of Hades. The Veda has two Cerberi, who are said to belong to King Yama. Yama was the first royal man who started the practice of dying. He then went aloft to heaven, and found there, once for all, a choice place where the sons of man might disport themselves after death. There he rules as Yama, the King of Paradise. The Vedic texts look upon this pair of dogs in a variety of ways. First, the soul of man has to get past them in order to get to heaven. This is the familiar Cerberus idea. Secondly, the two dogs of Yama pick out daily candidates for death. Thirdly, the dogs are entrusted with the care of the souls of the dead on their way to join Yama in heaven. Now we might almost ask with the riddle: “What is it?” I wonder whether there is not present in this audience some ingenious man or woman who can guess what real pair in nature on the way to heaven, coursing like dogs across the heaven, can harmonise these discrepant points of view. But we are not left to guess. The Vedic texts tell us in plain language that they are the sun and the moon, or as they are called, with a very ancient poetic touch, the speckled and the dark. Now the word for speckled is çabalas; it fits in well enough with Greek Κέρβερος, considering the susceptibility of mythic proper names to the kind of modulation, or sophistication, which we call popular etymology. But we may disregard the verbal etymology altogether. Other Indo-European peoples have more or less definite notions about one or two dogs. It is more than probable that the early notions of future life turned to the visible heaven with its sun and moon, rather than the topographically unstable and elusive caves and gullies that lead, in the unquestionably late Greek fancy, to a wide-gated Hades. I cannot here afford the time that would be required to the full exposition of this myth, and would refer you to my little book, Cerberus, the Dog of Hades: The History of an Idea, published in 1905, which I regard as my program of method in the study of Comparative Mythology. Now, to be sure, we find that other peoples, not Indo-European, here and there, own a dog who gets in the way of the soul on its way to heaven. Obviously, the conception may have arisen independently in the same way: the dead journeying upward to heaven, but interfered with by a coursing heavenly body, the sun or the moon, or both. But grant that somewhere or other a dog, pure and simple, has strayed into this sphere of conceptions without any organic mythological meaning, simply as a baying, hostile, watchdog in heaven or hell. We cannot therefore ignore the wonderful yet simple Indo-European myth which is begotten of high reason and keen appreciation of myth-making opportunity. Plainly, this myth requires no further explanation from the usually vague and half-understood analogies that may be found on the broad ground of universal Ethnology and Folk-lore. Far be it from me to suggest that mythological evidence, whencesoever obtainable, should be excluded from these deliberations: all I want to prevent is the importation of bad coal into Newcastle. Since the Indo-Europeans are one people, let us first study their own minds in their own literature or archeological remains, before turning to the Iroquois, the Papuas, or the inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands for sporadic reports that, more often than not, reach our ear out of their proper connection, or with their point bent. When the smoke shall have cleared there will be—of this I am certain—less airy reliance on ethnological quantities irrational in Indo-European mathematics. But there will be left a goodly stock of Indo-European divinities and simple myths, profoundly interesting, not only with the interest of hoary antiquity, but even more so because they determine and explain the main lines along which move the mythologies of the Indo-European peoples of historical times. The main substance, though by no means the entire substance, of the mythologies and religions of these peoples—this is as true to-day as it was in the days of Benfey, Kuhn and Müller—is the nature myth. If we count Brahmanical theosophy and Buddhism as the two great yields of the study of Hinduism, we may safely add Comparative Mythology as the third great field of religious history that has been opened out by the study of India. Had we but fuller records of ancient Indo-European history and literature, these fuller records would reveal more common myths and religious ideas. The added facts would fill in the necessarily sketchy picture, but it would still be the same picture.
We are by the limits of our plan restricted here to those religious ideas which concern the early religion of India, and even of these we shall select only the more important. We begin with the remoter of the two periods, the Indo-European period.
The universal Indo-European word for “god” was deivos, gone over into archaic Latin as deivos (deus), Celtic devos in the Gallic proper name Devognata, Old Scandinavian tivar, “gods,” Lithuanian devas, and Sanskrit devas. The irreproachable etymology which connects this word with the verb div, dyu, “shine,” shows that the word came from the luminous manifestations of nature by day and night, and determines authoritatively the source from which the Indo-Europeans derived their first and most pervasive conception of divine power. On more limited Indo-European territory appears another general term, Slavic bogu, Old Persian baga Avestan bagha “god,” Sanskrit bhaga “god of fortune.”[^1] The word is again of clear origin: it means “spender of goods, or blessings.” It contains the abstract conception of a good god, embodying an eternal and never slumbering wish of mankind. The same eastern region of the Indo-European territory has in common another sacred word, used as an attribute of divinity, namely, Avestan (Persian) spenta, Lithuanian szventas, Old Slavic svqtti, “pure” or “holy.” This secures for prehistoric religion an important spiritual concept. Two important conceptions expressing sentiment towards the gods, that of reverence (Sanskrit yaj, Avestan yaz, Greek ay in ἄζομαι, “revere”), and that of belief (Sanskrit çraddha, Latin credo, Celtic cretim, “believe”) come from old times, though they need not necessarily have been in vogue in every part of the territory occupied by the Indo-Europeans prior to historic times.
All Indo-Europeans revered the shining sky of daytime as a mighty being. The Hindus, Greeks, and Romans call him respectively Dyaush pitar, Zeus pater, and Diespiter or Jupiter. The meaning of the name is quite transparent in the Veda, where dyaus is still both common and proper noun. It always means sky. The Latin expression sub Jove frigido, “under a cold sky,” “in a cold climate,” preserves the sense of the word as a fossil. The slender myth that is contained here is that of a marital relation between the visible two halves of the cosmos. The lady, or “correspondent” in the affair was “Mother Earth” (Vedic prithivi matar, “terra mater”).[^2] This union was blessed with children, known frequently in the Veda, and occasionally elsewhere, as the children of the Sky. In the Veda Agni, “Fire,” Ushas, “Dawn,” and especially the dual “Horsemen,” the Açvins, are so named. The “Horsemen,” as we shall see later, correspond to the Greek Dioscuri (Διόσκουροι), “Sons of Zeus, or Heaven,” Castor and Pollux, and to the “Sons of God” in Lettish mythology. In this instance at least the concept “children of Father Sky” is prehistoric, and genuinely mythic.
The sky has another irrepressible quality: it thunders. In this aspect also it became a personal god with a definite name in prehistoric times, who tends at times, as one might naturally suppose, to encroach on the domain of Father Sky, or to blend with him. The chief heathen god of the Lithuanians was Perkunas, “Thunderer,” from which is derived the word perkunyja, “thunder-storm.” The identity of this name with the parents of the Norse “Thunderer,” the god Thor (Donar), namely, the male Fjorgynn and the female Fjorgyn, has never been questioned. Here also belongs Parjanya, that most transparent divinity of the rain-storm in the Vedic hymns, who “roars like a lion and thunderous strikes the evil-doers.” There is some slight phonetic difficulty here. I would suggest that the word has been modulated euphemistically, so as to suggest the idea of “guarding the folk” (pari, “about,” and jana, “folk”).[^3] Homer’s Zeus has absorbed the “Thunderer,” and therefore appears in a double aspect. On the one hand he is “far-eyed Sky” (εὐρύοπα); on the other he is “cloud-gatherer” (νεφεληγερέτης), and “rejoices in lightning,” or, “twists the lightning” (τερπικέραυνος). The Lithuanian Perkunas has absorbed the functions of Zeus and has become chief god. In the Veda also[^4] Parjanya is called “Father Asura,” making him for the moment the double of Father Sky, the Asura. In another passage he is even more directly identified with Dyaus.[^5]
The Veda has a pair of twin gods, known as the “two Horsemen” (açvin). They are frequently called “Sons of Heaven” (divo napdta). Of all Vedic divinities they have the most pronounced mythical and legendary character. They put in their appearance regularly in the morning, along with other divinities of morning light. A maiden by the name of Sūrya, that is “Sun-Maiden,” or daughter of Surya, that is “Daughter of the Sun,” is captivated by the youthful beauty of the Açvins, chooses them for her husbands, and ascends their chariot that is drawn by birds. A different yet related touch is added to their character in a riddlesome brief story[^6] which furnishes them with another female relation, namely, a mother by the name of Saranyu. And, once more, with considerable deviation, they figure in a heavenly marriage in which they themselves are not the principals. They are the wooers in a marriage which their own bride Sūrya, according to a later view, enters into with Soma, the Moon. The specific use of the Açvins is that they are the most reliable helpers in need. The hymns harp persistently upon the fact that all sorts of men and women have in the past appealed to them for aid, and have not been disappointed.[^7] Even animals are helped or cured by them. In one instance they perform a cure calculated to make green with envy even the most skilled of modern veterinary surgeons, if by any chance he should hear of it. When the racing mare Vicpala breaks a leg they put an iron one in its place: with that she handily wins the race.[^8]
Even the most stalwart sceptics in this field have not found it in their hearts to deny the connection of these divinities and their female relative with the Dioscuri, the “Sons of Zeus,” Castor and Pollux (Poludeukes), and their sister Helena. The name of the Açvins’ mother Saranyu may, according to a suggestion of Professor E. W. Fay, in its first two syllables contain the sound for sound equivalent of the two first syllables of Helena. The connection with horses, expressed in the name of the Açvins (açva, “horse”), comes out more strongly with the Dioscuri, who are celebrated tamers of horses, riders of horses, and charioteers. The Dioscuri also were revered as helpers in need, and therefore were called Anaktes, “protecting lords.”
In another quarter, with the Lettish or Baltic peoples, a strikingly similar myth appears, with the notable addition that the two “Sons of God” are mentioned individually as the morning or evening star. This calls up a feature of the Greek myth: Zeus rewards the affection of the Dioscuri for one another by placing them in the heavens either as morning and evening star, or the twin stars Gemini. So, to this day, the gigantic statues of the horse-taming Dioscuri opposite the Quirinal palace in Rome carry stars on their heads.
A Lithuanian folk-song (daina) runs as follows:
“The Moon did wed the Maiden Sun, In an early day of spring-tide. The Maiden Sun arose betimes, The Moon just then did slink away.
“He wandered by himself afar, Coquetted with the morning-star. Perkunas hence was greatly wroth; He cleft him with his sword in twain;
“Why didst thou thus desert the Sun, And wander in the night afar? Why didst thou flirt with the morning-star? His heart was filled with grief and pain.”[^9]
Perkunas is the god of thunder. In the mythology of these peoples he has absorbed the characteristics of the old god of heaven and become the chief god, just as Zeus, conversely, has taken upon himself the functions of the “Thunderer.” This folk-story presents the materials of the Hindu Açvin legend in a new arrangement, not at all applicable to the Hindu myth. But the materials, Sun-Maiden, Moon, and “Sons of God,” are there. In another folk-song, this time a Lettish one, the morning-star is represented as pursuing amorously Saule, the equivalent of Vedic Surya, the “Sun-Maiden.”[^10]
With all the rich and often perplexing modulations of this myth, we have the common kernel of a heavenly dual pair of divinities in intimate relation with a female divinity of the heavens. The quality of helpers in need and saviours in trouble is almost unquestionably begotten of the universal notion that the divinities of morning light overcome the hostile powers of darkness. We are not quite so certain as are some excellent scholars that the heavenly pair were originally the morning and evening star, nor has any other naturalistic explanation been proposed which is finally satisfactory.[^11] In any case, one of the pair, at least, to which the other has been subordinated, belongs to the events of nature in the morning, and the marriage is with the “Sun-Maiden” (Surya, Saule); or the “Sun Maiden” is imagined to be their sister (Helena), or even their mother (Saranyu).[^12]
The myth of which I have given here the merest outline flits about considerably among superficially discrepant notions. It is overlaid with many secondary fancies of the poet and story-teller. No sane scholar will now, as was once the habit, try to make each of the silly “stunts” which the Vedic hymns ascribe to the Açvins part of the organic matter contained in the myth. They are mostly later fancy. And even after deducting the crudities of past interpreters we must not quarrel with certain mental reservations as to this and that detail. But in the last outcome no rational historian or antiquarian will ignore such parallels as shows the story of the two “Sons of Heaven” with the Hindus, the Greeks, and the Letts,[^13] or be so abstemious as to refrain from looking for reasonable motives for the creation of a myth that has so marked a physiognomy.
In brief, once more, there are two luminous sons of heaven, conceived as horsemen, and as helpers of men in all kinds of sore straits. They are in loving relation with another, feminine, heavenly divinity conceived as a “Sun-Maiden,” or “Daughter of the Sun.” This relation is crossed by another affair between the “Sun-Maiden” and the Moon. To conceptions of this sort the Indo-Europeans, before their separation into the peoples of historical times, had advanced. The changes and additions to the myth are not surprising; surprising is, that the myth should have retained its chief features during great periods of time, in very various surroundings, and under the constant pressure of a flood of remodelling ideas poured out upon it by the fertile mind of man, and tending constantly to obliterate the more primitive and simple fancies.
I have dwelt before upon the almost romantic interest which attaches itself to the relationship of the two peoples, the Hindus and the Iranians.[^14] Separated only by a chain of mountains, they are entirely unconscious of the close relationship of their languages, literatures, and religions. Nowhere in the Veda is there the slightest knowledge of the Avesta; nowhere is the Avesta conscious that there is going on across the Himalaya Mountains in India an intense and characteristic religious development which started with a good many of the same primitive beliefs as were absorbed by the religion of Zoroaster. As time went by the religions of the two peoples became about as different as it is possible for religions of civilised peoples to be. On the one side, Parsism or Zoroastrianism, molded by the mind of a single prophet, Zarathushtra, or Zoroaster: a dualistic religion, believing in God and Satan; an ethical, optimistic, but at the bottom really unphilsophical religion; yet sufficient, as the modern Parsis show, to guide a people into a very superior form of life. On the other side, higher Hinduism, monistic, pessimistic, and speculative; without real leadership, except that which is present in the own spirit of each individual bent upon finding the way out of a hated round of existences through a keen conviction that there is only one fundamental truth, the Brahma in the universe and in one’s self; that, consequently, this world of things is illusory, and must be discarded in order to release from existence.
But these two religions began at approximately the same point, and they continue with enough of the same materials to make the study of each in some measure dependent upon the other. We are here concerned with the Vedic side only. A very considerable number of important Vedic divinities, religious conceptions, and sacred institutions belong to this common Aryan period.[^15] Their sphere is enlarged, their meaning better defined, and their chronology shifted across long periods of time, if we keep our eye on the Avesta. Of course we must not neglect to allow for the process of recoining which these ideas have passed through in India. In a certain sense every prehistoric religious idea that has managed to survive and to emerge in India has become Hindu; not the least fascinating part of these researches is to show just how the spirit of India nationalises or individualises the ideas that were born on a different soil.
Two spheres of Vedic ideas and practices concern us here in a particular degree. The first is the sphere of the great Vedic god Varuna, his dual partner Mitra, and a set of gods known as Ādityas, to whom belong both Varuna and Mitra. Varuna, unquestionably the most imposing god of the Rig-Veda, is in charge of the moral law or order of the universe, that rta which, we have seen, dates at least as far back as 1600 B.C. The second sphere is that of the plant soma, which is pressed artfully so as to yield an intoxicating liquor that is accepted joyfully by the Vedic gods as their tipple. It was pressed first by a mythic first man of the name of Yama, and by his divine father Vivasvant. Yama has a sister Yamī, the first pair, who unconventionally people the world. Vivasvant, “the shining one,” is the father of Yama, the final progenitor who carries this familiar chain of logic to an end. He is, in all probability, either the “fire,” or the “sun”; or, mixedly, “the sun, the divine fire.” In each of these spheres Vedic mythology presents itself in its most brilliant aspects. We shall deal with them in the order stated.
In common with most scholars I believe that the god Varuna is to be connected, if not identified, with the chief good and wise god of the Zoroastrian faith, namely Ahura Mazda, or Ormazd, that is “Wise Lord.” Varuna carries the title Asura, “Lord,” the same word as Ahura; this, however, must not be held to say too much, because other gods of the Veda are honoured with the same distinguishing title. But Varuna is a close partner in a partnership which is expressed in the dual number. It consists of himself and the god Mitra, who is, however, little more than a silent partner in the combination. Such partnerships are frequent in the Veda, but exceedingly rare in the Persian Avesta. Yet the Avesta, in a matter-of-fact manner, joins Ahura and Mithra in the same dual partnership as the Veda does Varuna and Mitra.[^1] Since Ahura is the paramount divinity of the Avesta his pairing with Mithra has every appearance of a fossil, left over from a time when Ahura’s supremacy had not yet become absolute, in other words, from a time when Ahura and Mithra were on a par of dignity. It seems to me an almost unimaginable feat of scepticism to doubt the original identity of the two pairs. Ahura figures, however, by himself also. Again, it seems unlikely that Ahura Mazda, when mentioned by himself, is not the same Ahura that appears in the combination Ahura and Mithra, because Ahura Mazda, taken by himself, is so very like Varuna, the Vedic partner of Mitra. In the Zoroastrian system Ahura Mazda orders the world, and assigns to all good creatures and entities their respective places and activities. Ahura creates the divine order (asha), the good waters and plants, light, earth, and all that is good. He was the first progenitor, the first father of divine order. He made a way for the sun and the stars. It is he that causes the moon to grow or wane.[^2] As guardian of divine order Ahura is not to be deceived, does not sleep; he sees all human deeds, overt or covert.[^3]
The Veda describes Varuna in the same spirit, at times in almost the same words. He is the supporter of beings; he has spread the atmosphere over the forests; has put fleetness into the steed, and milk into the cows. He has placed intelligence into the heart, fire into the waters, the sun upon the sky, the soma-plant upon the mountains. He has opened a path for the sun; the floods of the rivers hasten seaward like racers obeying the divine order.[^4] Even more pointed than Ahura’s is the expression of Varuna’s omniscience and undeceivableness: he sees all the past and all the future; he is present as a third wherever two men secretly scheme; his spies do not close their eyes.
The hymn Atharva-Veda 4. 16 presents a rugged picture of Varuna in his role of omniscient and omnipotent god:
“The great guardian among these gods sees as if from anear. He that thinketh he is moving stealthily—all this the gods know.
“Whoso stands, walks, or sneaks about, and whoso goes slinking off, whoso runs to cover;—if two sit together and scheme, King Varuna is there as the third and knows it.
“Both this earth here belongs to King Varuna and also yonder broad sky, whose bounds are far away. The two oceans are Varuna’s loins; yea, in this petty drop of water is he hidden.
“Whoso should flee beyond the heavens far away would yet not be free from King Varuna. From the sky his spies come hither; with a thousand eyes they do watch over the earth.
“All this King Varuna does behold—what is between the two firmaments, what beyond. Numbered of him are the winkings of men’s eyes. As a (winning) gamester puts down the dice, thus does he establish these (laws).”
Another hymn, Rig-Veda 7. 86, depicts Varuna as guardian of moral order, hence angry at the misdeeds of men. The contrite attitude of his suppliant, a singer of the family of the Vasishthas, the authors of the seventh book of the Rig-Veda, has a strong Hebraic flavor, and, like the preceding hymn, suggests many a passage of the Psalms:
“Wise, truly, and great is his own nature, Who held asunder spacious earth and heaven. He pressed the sky, the broad and lofty, upward, Aye, spread the stars, and spread the earth out broadly.
“With my own self I hold communion: How shall I ever with Varuna find refuge? Will he without a grudge accept my offering? When may I joyous look and find him gracious?
“Fain to discover this my sin, I question, I go to those who know, and ask of them. The self-same story they all in concert tell me; ‘God Varuna it is whom thou hast angered.’
“What was my chief offence, O Varuna, That thou wouldst slay thy friend who sings thy praises? Tell me, infallible Lord, of noble nature, That I may be prompt to quench thy wrath with homage!
“Loose us from sins committed by our fathers, From all those, too, which we ourselves committed! Loose us, as thieves are loosed that lifted cattle; As from a calf, take off Vasishtha’s fetters!
“‘T was not my own sense, Varuna! ‘T was deception, ‘T was scant thought, strong drink, or dice, or passion. The old are there to lead astray the younger, Nay, sleep itself provokes unrighteous actions.
“Let me do service to the merciful giver, The zealous god, like a slave, but sinless! The gracious god gave wisdom to the foolish, He leads the wise, himself more wise, to riches.
“May this our song, O Varuna, we pray thee, Reach to thy heart, O god of lofty nature! On home and work do thou bestow well-being; Protect us, gods, for evermore with blessings!”
We are accustomed to make much allowance for general similarities in the conceptions of the gods of different peoples, but it is scarcely possible that they should reach so far. The connection that exists between Ahura Mazda and Varuna is expressed, however, not only through their general similarity as supreme arbiters of the world and its moral law. That very particular conception, which dignifies alike Veda and Avesta, namely, Vedic rta, Avestan asha (areta), and Cuneiform Persian arta, is, of course, not entirely put in the keep of those two gods. But it is theirs in an especial degree. One of the most interesting parallels between Veda and Avesta is that both gods are described as the “spring of the rta, or righteousness.” Varuna is khā rtasya (Rig-Veda 2. 28. 5); Ahura Mazda as ashahe khāo, (Yasna 10. 4). The words are sound for sound the same. The high thought of the rta is in many ways similar to the Confucian idea of order, harmony, and absence of disturbance. It is unquestionably the best conception that has been elaborated by the Aryans.
We have seen[^5] that it reaches back at least to 1600 B.C., and yet, notwithstanding its early date, it is superior to any of the earlier conceptions of the remaining Indo-European peoples. As far as the Veda is concerned, it presents itself under the threefold aspect of cosmic order, correct and fitting cult of the gods, and moral conduct of man.[^6] We have in connection with the rta a pretty complete System of Ethics, a kind of Counsel of Perfection.
As the basis of cosmic order the rta rules the world and nature. The established facts of the visible world, but especially the events of nature that recur periodically, are fixed or regulated by rta. Those daughters of heaven, the Maidens Dawn, shine upon the morning sky in harmony with rta, or when they wake up in the morning they rise from the seat of rta. The sun is placed upon the sky in obedience to the rta. He is called the wheel of rta with twelve spokes. This means that he courses across the sky as the year of twelve months. Even the shallow mystery that the red, raw cow yields white, cooked milk is “the rta of the cow guided by the rta.”[^7] The gods themselves are born of the rta or in the rta (rtajāta); they show by their acts that they know the rta, observe the rta, and love the rta.[^8]
The religion of the Veda, as we have observed, rests upon the material foundation of cult and sacrifice. These performances are not always regarded merely as merchandise wherewith to traffic for the blessings of the gods. They begin to evolve intrinsic virtues and harmonies. In a later time, the time of the Yajur-Vedas, as we have seen,[^9] the technical acts of the sacrifice are imbued with magic and divine power. But even in the Rig-Veda the sacrifice fire is kindled under the “yoking of the rta” or, as we should say, under the auspices of world order. Agni, the god of fire, is “scion of the rta,” or “first-born of the rta.” He performs his work with rta, carries oblations to the gods “on the path of rta.” Prayers, lowing like cattle, “longing for the soma-drink,” take effect in accordance with rta.[^10] A figure of speech, bold to the point of grotesqueness, turns prayer into “rta-fluid, distilled by the tongue.”[^11] Holy sacrifice, in distinction from foul magic, is performed with rta: “I call upon the gods, undefiled by witchcraft. With rta I perform my work, carry out my thought.”[^12] Thus exclaims a poetic mind conscious of its own rectitude.
Finally in man’s activity the rta manifests itself as the moral law. Here it takes by the hand the closely kindred idea of truth, satya. Untruth, on the other hand, is anrta, more rarely asatya, the same two words with prefix of negation. The two words satya and anrta form a close dual compound, “truth and lie,” “sincerity and falsehood,” both zealously watched over by God Varuna.[^13] They remain the standard words for these twin opposites for all Hindu time. Varuna is the real trustee of the rta. When God Agni struggles towards the rta he is said in a remarkable passage to become for the time being God Varuna.[^14]
Truth and lie include, by an easy transition, right and wrong-doing. In a famous hymn[^15] Yami (Eve) invites Yama (Adam) to incestuous intercourse. Mythically speaking this is, of course, unavoidable: they are the first pair, and there are no other human beings whatsoever. But the poet conceives of the situation in the spirit of his own time. When Yami pretends to justify the act Yama exclaims pithily: “In saying the rta we shall really say the anrta,” which, rendered more broadly, means to say: “When we pretend to justify the act as being rta, ‘right-doing,’ we really shall knowingly engage in anrta, ‘wrong-doing.’” We may imagine Yama finally saying: “Anyhow, don’t let us beat the devil about the stump!”
Varuna and Mitra, the dual pair, are implicated still further in a group of divinities of the name āditya. The number of these gods is very uncertain. Sometimes it is three: Mitra and Varuna, with Aryaman as third. This third god, no less than the first two, is Indo-Iranian: the name of Aryaman’s Avestan counterpart is Airyama. The name of this not too determinate god seems to mean “comrade”; accordingly Aryaman figures in the Veda as the typical groomsman at the wedding rites. Beyond this triad the name āditya becomes very indefinite, both as to number and the individuals which it is supposed to harbor. As regards number, the god Indra sometimes swells the three to four. Then there is seven, a favourite and vague number; to this the legendary Martanda[^16] (Indra) is at times added as eighth. In later times the number rises to twelve. Not more than six are ever mentioned by name outright in the Veda: Bhaga, Daksha, and Anga in addition to the three mentioned above. Bhaga, “Fortune,” is not only Indo-Iranian, but even Indo-European, as we have seen.[^17] Anga, “Portion,” “Apportioner,” is a very faint abstraction. And so is Daksha, “Dexterity,” “Cleverness.”
Now the Veda conceives of the Ādityas as the descendants of a feminine Aditi who cuts a considerable figure as a very abstract female, suggesting the ideas of “freedom from fetters,” “freedom from guilt,” “boundlessness,” and “universe.” She is finally identified in the Hindu mind with “earth.” A father who might be responsible for the offspring of this interesting lady is never mentioned. We are struck first of all with the fact that Aditi, the mother, a purely Hindu product, is obviously younger than her own sons, the best of whom are at least as old as the Indo-Iranian period. I have, for my part little doubt but what Aditi is a well-executed abstraction of some kind. In the past I have suggested[^18] that the word āditya meant originally “of yore,” and that this set of antique gods whose most substantial members are prehistoric were thus fitly named “gods of yore” or “gods of old.” We may perhaps contrast with this the description of Indra as “later born” (anujāvara), in a legend told in Taittiriya Brahmana (2. 2. 10). From the word āditya, conceived as a metronymic, the feminine Aditi might be easily abstracted. If this is well taken we must assume that the Veda had forgotten the meaning of āditya in the sense of “of yore.” This was necessarily the case before some speculative genius might invent the mother Aditi. Another explanation, that of Professor Macdonell,[^19] has perhaps the advantage of greater simplicity. He starts from the expression aditeh putrah, which is applied several times to the Ādityas. This, he thinks, may have meant originally “sons of freedom,” perhaps better “sons of guiltlessness”; such an expression may have led to the personification of Aditi as a female mother of Ādityas. At all events Aditi may be safely regarded as later drippings from the very sappy myth of Varuna and the Ādityas. The interpretation of Aditi as “boundlessness,” or “universe,” sits very well upon an assumed mother of these great gods. Aditi is later defined as “earth,” a narrowing of her scope, somewhat as we of the modern languages make synonymous the terms “world” and “earth.”[^20]
The mythic cycle represented by Mitra-Mithra and Varuna-Ahura is important for early Vedic religion, and, more permanently, for the whole history of Persian religion. There is no chapter of Aryan religion and mythology that has stimulated the instinct of ultimate interpretation more persistently than this very one. I am of those who cannot imagine any cessation of these attempts for any great length of time. The one solid point in the genesis of these myths is the solar character of the Aryan Mitra. In later Persian the word mithra in the form mihir is the name of the sun. As previously stated,[^21] this solar Mithras passed, in the centuries after Christ, out of the bounds of Persia and started upon a career of conquest which threatened at one time to subject all Western civilisation.
Now what is the natural origin of that other partner in the dual partnership, namely, Vedic Varuna the Asura, Avestan Ahura Mazda? Not very many years ago Professor Oldenberg advanced and defended ingeniously the hypothesis[^22] that Varuna is the Moon, and this theory he did not hesitate to follow to a very logical conclusion. Mitra and Varuna are Sun and Moon. They are members, as we have seen, in a group of gods called Ādityas. Oldenberg chooses, perhaps a little hastily, the number seven as the sum total of this group.[^23] Similarly in the Avesta, Ahura is accompanied by the so-called “Immortal Holy Ones,” the Amesha Spents, the angels of the Puritan Zoroastrian faith. They also make up the number seven. Mithra, we may note, is altogether absent from the Avestan arrangement. Now Oldenberg believes not only that Varuna and Mitra were the Moon and the Sun, but that the Ādityas, essentially identical with the Amesha Spents, were the planets. He assumes still further that the whole set, originally, were not Indo-European divinities at all, but that they were borrowed by the Aryans from a Shemitic people—presumably the Babylonians—far enough advanced in astronomical knowledge to observe the interrelations of sun, moon, and the planets.
The Adityas and the Amesha Spents have been compared often, perhaps over-confidently. It is not necessary, in order to feel unconvinced by Professor Oldenberg’s chain of consequences, to deny a certain nebulous cluster of ancillary or subsidiary divinities which hovered about the persons of the supreme Indo-Iranian twin-gods Ahura-Mithra, Varuna-Mitra. As a matter of fact the Amesha Spents are not the Adityas. I do not believe that the Adityas, indefinite in number and gradual in their development in India, represent that cluster, or even its very gradual Hindu substitutes. Several Adityas, notably Mitra, Bhaga, and Aryaman recur in the Avesta, but are not listed as Amesha Spents. Either Macdonell’s or my own hypothesis[^24] as to the origin of the Adityas presupposes that their origin as a class of gods is gradual and secondary. The Amesha Spents, on the other hand, are sheer abstractions. I confess that there is not in me the faith to see in them anything as concrete as personified planets. The mere names of the “Immortal Holy Ones” show what I mean. They are: Vohu Manah, “Good Mind”; Asha Vahishta, “Best Righteousness”; Khshathra Vairya, “Wished-for Kingdom,” or “Good Kingdom”; Spenta Armaiti, “Holy Harmony”; Haurvatat, “Soundness,” “Health”; and Ameretat, “Immortality.” It is a beautiful, heavenly hierarchy, but it is unmythological, non-naturalistic to the bone. If anywhere, then here is the place where sprang up purely symbolic gods in the manner of the symbolic creations in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
As for the Shemitic source of this deified solar system, Professor Oldenberg, if I understand him aright, is in part led thereto by the striking ethical character which is manifested by the gods of this group at so early a period of Indo-European history as is the common period of Persia and India. He thinks that the Shemites preceded the Indo-Europeans in the evolution of ethical concepts, and that the ethical coloring of the Ahura-Varuna myth came along with the divinities themselves. But, as I have shown, we find the chief Aryan ethical concept, the rta, safely imbedded in the Persian dynastic Arta-names that are reported in the Cuneiform Tel-el-Amarna tablets, 1600 years B.C. Now that date lies far back of the period from which Professor Oldenberg would deduce his results. I should prefer to judge that the wide prevalence of this idea at a very early date shows rather that some, if not all, Indo-Europeans had advanced in ethical perception at an earlier date than has hitherto been suspected, at a date when the Shemites had not as yet evolved any ethical ideas of quite as fine a flavor as the rta.
Professor Oldenberg is not the only scholar to whom Varuna has suggested the moon. Yet I think that this interpretation, when taken outside of that hypothesis which involves the entire solar system, has not very much in its favor beyond the close dualic connection of Varuna with Mitra, the sun. I confess, moreover, that I am not quite willing to listen to any interpretation of this god which leaves out in the cold Greek Ouranos. There has been some phonetic scepticism about the equation varunas = ouranos which time has not justified. Greek ouranos is Indo-European uorn-nnos or uorn-enos; Sanskrit varunas is Indo-European uorn-nos. The two forms differ no more than, for instance, Vedic nutanas and nutnas, “recent,” or Greek steganos and stegnos, “covered.” Here is a situation met with quite often in this kind of inquiry. The interpretation of the myth is, as usual, not quite certain. Few interpretations of advanced myths are quite certain. Next, the etymology, like that of many etymologies of mythic proper names, likewise brings with it no bonded guaranty. The next step is, that they who do not believe in the interpretation are prone to belittle the etymology. But there is little gain in pooh-poohing an etymology which will not stay pooh-poohed. The time will never be when any interpretation that disregards this obvious comparison will pass current free from perplexity and misgivings. All settlements that do not regard it will be temporary and doomed in the end to be repudiated. It would seem to me that we must accept this important etymology, and submit to its guidance. It shows that Varuna belongs not only to the Indo-Iranian (Aryan) time, but reaches back to the Indo-European time, and that he represents, on the impeccable testimony of ouranos, some aspect of the heavens, probably the encompassing sky, in accordance with the stem uorn which is its essential element. Rig-Veda 8. 41. 3 states that Varuna, the distinguished god, embraces the all, and Rig-Veda 1. 50. 6 states that Mitra (the sun) is the eye of Varuna. The dualism of Heaven and its eye, the sun, is not less well taken than the dualism sun and moon.
Into the gusty discussion which has grown up in a particular degree around this point of interpretation I would lead my hearers no farther. There is perhaps not a single point in the comparative study of this most important sphere of Aryan religion which is lifted entirely above doubt. I have endeavored to give a conservative estimate of the varying interpretations, as free from fanciful exaggeration of the probabilities as it is from unwholesome scepticism.
We may now turn to the second great sphere of Indo-Iranian mythology. It deals with the first men and sacrificers, and the soma-liquor, the most distinguished sacrifice to the gods.
One of the duties of primitive man as he grows into the irksome habit of looking for the reason of things is to find a reason for himself. He does not take himself for granted, but assumes that he originated from something or other. This is as a rule not as easy as it is in the myth of Deucalion. All that he had to do was to throw stones, the bones of Mother Earth, behind him, and, behold, there were men. The abstract benevolent Divinity turning himself into a creative Father God is not always at hand; he does not on the whole represent a very primitive form of thought, certainly not in India. An important and widespread conception, partly religious in character, is Totemism. This is founded on the belief that the human race, or, more frequently, that given clans and families derive their descent from animals: totemic names like “Bear” and “Wolf” carry traces of this sort of belief into our time. This particular question is a splendid theme of universal ethnology, but I have never been able to discover that it has any considerable bearing upon the ancient religion of India. The many hints at its possible importance should be substantiated by a larger and clearer body of facts than seems at present available.[^25]
We have met previously the greatest parents of them all: Heaven and Earth. Their union was conceived in early Indo-European times as the fruitful source of the heavenly gods. Occasionally they shoulder the additional responsibility for the human race as well. In the Indo-Iranian period there was a personage, Vedic Vivasvant, Avestan Vivanhvant, who figures rather paradoxically as the father of the first men, Yama and Manu. He is, as the Vedic texts state distinctly and intelligently, the Sun conceived as the Father of men.[^26] God Agni, “Fire,” is occasionally regarded as the progenitor of men.[^27] There is in this some vague symbolic connection with the process of obtaining fire by friction. This is the Vedic process: the two sticks which are rubbed are conceived as parents; Agni is their child, the first progeny, and, next, possibly, the first man. Certainly the epithet ayu, “living,” is used, on a large scale, of fire and man alike. It continues, or seems to continue, a sense of the relationship of Agni and man.[^28]
Now the Veda discloses, and all Hindu tradition harps upon, a father of the human race by the name of Manu, or Manush Pitar, “Father Manu.” The word manu is nothing else than our own word “man”: there is good reason to believe that this “original man” was set up as a kind of Adam or Noah in Indo-European times.[^29] For a while the primitive mind seems to be well content with this eponymous man: later on, as I shall presently show, Manu is in his turn duly furnished with a well-established father, Vivasvant, about whose origin people have ceased to worry.
From a later time, yet still a very early time, namely, the Indo-Iranian period, comes the Vedic myth of Yama, the son of Vivasvant. This myth is the clearest and best-preserved common piece of property of the two religions. As to the component ideas of this myth I see no room for doubt. Yama means “twin.” He is the male of the obligatory twin pair that is required to people the world in real earnest. The female Yami, little as is said about her in the earlier parts of the myth, plays Eve to Yama’s Adam. She is, however, not Yama’s bone, but his independent, self-poised sister. As a truthful historian I have been compelled to record that Yami, like Eve, was the prime mover in the nefarious but necessary act of peopling the world.
Both Manu and Yama are primarily nothing but first men. Yama’s father Vivasvant is probably primarily the sun, whose divine character is, however, at that time quite completely forgotten: old as is this affiliation it is probably not original, because the first twins, Yama and Yami, are in reality an attempt to beg the question of the origin of the human race altogether. The descent of man from the sun represents another start towards solving the difficulty; of course this conception must and does blend with the Yama pair. In the same way Manu begins quite early to adopt Vivasvant for his father, and he remains so for all time. The myths begin to interlace very much, and to sprout shoots in unexpected directions. A famous pair of riddle-stanzas, Rig-Veda 10. 17. 1 and 2, expand the theme in an interesting fashion, according to an interpretation which I have proposed:[^30] it is worth while to present it as an extreme example of the blend of original mythic roots into a real myth:
Tvashtar, the creator, offers his daughter Saranyu in marriage to the whole world of gods and mortals. The suitor who gains favor is Vivasvant, conceived as a mortal. Saranyu, barely wedded, is displeased with Vivasvant and flees; not, however, until she had given birth to the twins Yama and Yami. This marriage, you perceive, provides the twins with a mother, whereas they have previously had only a father. In order to make sure her escape, she changes into a mare and flees to the gods, who hide her away from her mortal family, Vivasvant, Yama, and Yami. The gods, in order to make matters still more safe, construct another female, called Savarna, who is to take Saranyu’s place in Vivasvant’s affections. The word savarṇā means “of like character”; it trickily states that the new female was at one and the same time like Saranyu in appearance, and also suitable in character to the mortal Vivasvant—more suitable than the divine Saranyu, we may perhaps understand. Vivasvant begets Manu with the Savarna, and thus Manu comes into possession both of a father and mother. Ultimately Vivasvant finds out the deception practised upon him, follows Saranyu in the shape of a horse,[^31] and thus gaining her favor, begets with her the Açvins, “the Horsemen” or Dioscuri. Saranyu abandons them also, just as she has previously abandoned the twins Yama and Yami, and resumes, we may understand, her independent station as a divinity.
The final outcome of these mythic entanglements are two progenitors of the human race: Yama the son of Vivasvant, and Manu the son of Vivasvant. They remind us in a way of Adam and Noah, especially as Manu is the hero of the Hindu flood-legend, which is astonishingly like the account of the book of Genesis. Vivasvant and his double progeny all of them are endowed for a good while with purely human qualities. According as the profane or sacred interest preponderates these first, and, of course, great men become kings or great sacrificers of yore. Manu is the typical first sacrificer. The later sacrificer of the time of the Veda, as he performs on his sacrificial place, fancies himself a Manu, doing like Manu (manusvat), in the house of Manu. In the Avesta Vivanhvant is the first mortal who pressed the drink haoma (soma) in behalf of the corporeal world. His son Yima and his descendants continued to do so, but Yima turns rather into a worldly ruler, the king of a golden age, in which there is nor old age nor death; nor heat nor cold; nor want nor disease. He becomes the leading Epic personality in later Persian times. In the Avesta he is called “Ruler Yima,” Yima Khshaeta; this expression turns in later Persian into Djemshed, the well-known hero of the Persian Epic, the Shah Nameh, or Book of Kings; the name is now familiar to Western readers as the interlocutor in Omar Khayyam’s Rubayat.
The myth takes another, even more important turn in the Veda. Yama is the first mortal king who died and found for the race of men a heaven where they may rejoice in the company of the pious dead, especially those pious archpriests of mythical antiquity, the Angiras. He is the first of mortals who died and went forth to this heaven:[^32] “Where is Vivasvant’s son, the king, where is heaven’s firm abode, where are yonder flowing waters, there let me live immortal.”[^33] “He (Yama) went before and found a dwelling from which no power can shut us out. Our fathers of old have travelled the path: it leads every earth-born mortal thither. There, in the midst of the highest heaven, beams unfading light, and eternal waters flow; there every wish is fulfilled on the rich meadows of Yama.” “These blessed have left behind them the decrepitude of their bodies; they are not lame nor crooked of limb.”[^34]
Yet this same Yama, such is the terror of death, becomes in due time the Hindu Pluto, god of hell and judge of the wicked. Which shows how important is the special and national treatment of myths, and how constant is the disregard of what may be called the radical beginnings of myths. From Yama of the golden age of man to dread Yama, the destroyer of the bodies of men—as such he figures in the later Pantheon of the Mahabharata—Comparative Mythology traces every step.
And now, the sacrificial substance which, when freely given to the gods, secures to mortals the golden age of the Avesta and the paradise of the Veda is the old Indo-Iranian drink, Vedic soma, Avestan haoma. It is an accepted fact with each people that this drink was prepared from a plant of the same name; that it was an intoxicating drink; and that it was regarded as the tipple of the gods, inspiring them to those valorous deeds which men craved of them. Physically, it is a plant that grows upon the mountains, has green shoots, and yields a golden fluid which insures health and long life and averts death. No wonder that Haoma-Soma is king of the plants, and that the pressing and offering of it was an important act. After pressing it was purified through a sieve of hair and mixed with milk—doubtless the earliest milk-punch on record. The Rig-Veda and the Avesta report the names of the same ancient worthies that prepared the fluid for the gods: Vedic Vivasvant, Yama, and Trita Aptya; Avestan Vivanhvant, Yima, Athwya and Thrita. This marks the most intimate, if not the most important, relation between the two religious literatures.
Mythically, this wonderful drink was conceived as coming from heaven, the type on earth of the heavenly fluid that is hidden in the clouds. In the Veda a heavenly eagle, doubtless the lightning, breaks through the brazen castle, the cloud, within which the heavenly fluid is confined, and carries it off to earth, that is, causes it to pour down upon the earth. It is the simple phenomenon of cloud, lightning, and downpour of refreshing and life-giving rain which is turned into the heavenly prototype of this delightful drink.[^35] The Iranian haoma is also fetched from heaven by a bird, though the manner of his descent to earth is not told. In both literatures the drink finally turns god, slays demons, casts missiles, and gains in his perfect wisdom[^36] light for men, “the best world of the pious, the luminous world.”
In the Avesta the haoma practices and worship are somewhat fossilised: its use has become secondary and symbolic. In the Veda soma figures as the most distinguished offering, the champagne of the gods, which exhilarates them and inspires them to valorous deeds against demons and the enemies of the liberal sacrificer. Herculean Indra especially stands in need of an especial meed of courage in his demon fights; therefore he is the most insatiable consumer of “pools of soma” as the texts say. He has his very own allowance at noontide; the rest of the gods, including Indra, come in at the other nodal points of the day, morning and evening. The entire ninth book of the Rig-Veda tells of the sacred practice of brewing this Bacchanalian drink; it praises the drink itself as a god in poetic and ecstatic language. We may remember that the hieratic parts of the Rig-Veda are preoccupied with the dispensal of soma to such an extent that, in a sacral sense at least, we may speak of the religion of the rcah as a religion of soma rites.
I have tried with as secure a touch as in my power to sketch some of the principal myths and religious ideas which the Vedic Hindus preserved out of the long past which preceded their occupation of India. I am mindful of the relative insecurity of prehistoric reconstructions: they must, in the nature of the case, to some extent be prehistoric guesses. Nevertheless, in handling these specimens, and remembering others which time forbids me to treat here, my own faith at least in the reality of these very old fossils of human thought has grown and not shrunk. When I say human I mean, too, that they are so very human. They are of the logic of mental events. The effect upon the higher grade of primitive mind which the facts and events of the visible world may naturally be expected to have—that is the effect which we have traced. We must, of course, not imagine either Indo-Europeans or Indo-Iranians as town folk, but rather as semi-barbarous nomad and agricultural tribes, accustomed to look hard, and to be strongly interested in the sights that nature offers. Certainly if our analyses are not true they are well found: Father Sky and Mother Earth; next, the inevitable children of Father Sky, namely, the visible bodies and luminous phenomena on the sky, the deivós, “or shiners,” as the most persistent idea of the early gods; their destruction of hostile darkness; their character as overseers and guardians of cosmic and moral order; thunder, the commanding voice of another little less obvious god in heaven;—they appear treated with simplicity and directness, we may say with inevitable logic. The perplexed search after a first man, a first pair; the propagation of man; and man’s destiny after death is more subjective, yet carried out with clever realism. There is no better way until we come to the clarified, yet intrinsically no less impotent philosophies of a much later time. Because all these myths, fancies, poems, and chains of logic are founded on the outer universe and on human consciousness, therefore we are reasonably sure that they are real. This is an even more valuable guaranty than philological exactness and historical sense which, of course, should strengthen the hands of the trained investigator in every detail. In my opinion the mental sanity of Comparative Mythology is its brief to practise the profession of a true science; and it is permissible to say with renewed emphasis that the religion of the Veda is the child in direct succession of the prehistoric ideas which this science calls out from the dim past.