The Nature of Vedic Gods

NATURE’S drama is on an imposing scale in India. Sand-storm and cyclone, intense lightning, terrific thunder-claps, the heavy rush of rain in the monsoon, the swift flood in the stream that comes down from the hills, the scorching heat of the sun, the crackling red flames of the fire in the jungle, all witness to power beyond man’s power.

The singers of the Aryans felt their own littleness before these forces, and ‘in the faith of little children’ they instinctively thought that action movement, creation, change and destruction in nature were the result of superhuman forces. And because they saw that all action in human life was caused by men and women, by persons, they attributed the action that they saw in nature to divine persons. There are thus many gods in the Vedas to account for such varied natural phenomena as the glorious brightness of the sun, the blaze of the sacrificial fire, the sweep of the rain-storm across the skies, the recurrence of the dawn, the steady currents of the winds, the violence of the tropical storm. Special interest attaches to the mythology of these gods as given or discerned in the Veda, ‘because it represents an earlier stage of thought than is to be found in any other literature.’¹

Speaking generally, the hymns appear to be the utterances of simple men, who, under the influence of the most impressive phenomena of nature, saw everywhere the presence and agency of divine powers. They imagined that each of the great provinces of the universe was ruled and pervaded by its own separate deity, and they had not yet risen to a clear idea of one supreme creator and governor of all things. This is shown not only by the special functions assigned to particular gods, but in many cases by the names which they bear, corresponding to those of some of the elements or of the celestial luminaries.

Four things strike the student of Vedic religious thought at once:

(i) There is complete absence of system in the theological ideas and the mythology of the hymns. There are over a thousand hymns in the Rig-veda. Of these about 250 are addressed to Indra, and 200 to Agni, while other gods have only a single hymn. But the most careful investigator cannot draw up a satisfactory reasoned statement of Vedic faith from any or all of them.

(ii) In this immense amount of verse, there are an enormous number of repetitions, inconsistencies and even contradictions.

(iii) In spite of the many allusions to the gods there is a great lack of clear descriptions of the separate deities. The Vedic gods are not defined. Attributes of one are ascribed to another. Speaking generally, ’the personifications being but slightly developed, lack definiteness of outline and individuality of character. . . . The character of each god is made up of only a few essential qualities combined with many others which are common to all the gods, such as brilliance, power, beneficence, wisdom. These common attributes tend to obscure those which are distinctive.’²

(iv) A careful examination of the Vedic hymns shows also that the Aryans thought out for themselves different conceptions of the gods in the course of the centuries. Gods like Dyaus and Prithivi are passing away. Indra replaces Varuna. Vishnu is not as yet of importance. Śiva, Mahādeva, Dūrga, Kāli, Rāma, Krishna, Lakshmi, Ganapati are not as yet known. The triad (Trimūrti) of later Hinduism: Brahmā, Vishnu and Śiva, is as yet unheard of. There are traces, perhaps the beginnings of the idea developed in the Upanishads that all the gods are one under different names, and there is the beginning of the belief in abstract deities, such as Shraddha, devotion, Kāma, desire and especially in Prajāpati, the Lord of Creatures, which are distinct from the personified forces of fire and wind and rain and sun and sky that were the chief gods of the earlier Aryans. The speculations of the Upanishads are, of course, declared to be part of the Veda, but though verses and phrases may be extracted from the Vedic hymns to justify even the most advanced monism there is a real gulf between the beliefs enshrined in the hymns and the teaching of the sages of later days.

The ordinary word in the Vedas for god is Deva, and the original idea of the word deva is ‘bright’. The universal Indo-European word for ‘god’ was deivos, which appears in very archaic Latin as deivos, and later becomes deus. Devos in the Gallic proper name Devog-nata is its Celtic form. In Old Scandinavian tivar means ‘gods’. In Lithuanian the form dēvas is found, which is in Sanskrit deva. This noun is connected with the verb div, dyu, ‘shine’, the shining of the sun and of the moon. Its use shows that the Indo-Europeans derived their first and most pervasive conception of divine power from the brightness of the sun.³

Max Müller explains picturesquely how this word came to be used to designate the gods.

Deva meant originally bright, and nothing else. Meaning bright, it was constantly used of the sky, the stars, the sun, the dawn, the day, the spring, the rivers, the earth; and when a poet wished to speak of all these by one and the same word—by what we should call a general term—he called them all Devas. When that had been done, Deva did no longer mean ’the Bright ones,’ but the name comprehended all the qualities which the sky and the sun and the dawn shared in common excluding only those that were peculiar to each. Here you see how, by the simplest process, the Devas, the bright ones, might become and did become the Devas, the heavenly, the kind, the powerful, the invisible, the immortal and in the end something very like the theoi or dii of Greeks and Romans.⁴

The Number of the Devas

It is useless to attempt to say how many gods were worshipped by the early Aryans. They are generally spoken of as ’thrice-eleven’ or ’thirty-three.’⁵

Ye gods, who are eleven in the sky, who are eleven on earth, and who in your glory are eleven dwellers in the (atmospheric) waters, do ye welcome this our offering.⁶

The ’thirty-three’ did not include all.

With all the deities, three times eleven, here in close alliance with the Maruts, Bhrigus, Floods; Accordant, of one mind with Surya and with dawn. O Aśvins, drink the Soma-juice.⁷

A much larger number is mentioned by a seer who is honouring Agni, who declares:

Three times a hundred gods and thrice a thousand, and three times ten and nine have worshipped Agni.⁸

Another says:

The deities, three thousand and three hundred and thirty-nine have served and honoured Agni.⁹

Probably the general conception was merely that there were many gods and is better expressed in an earlier hymn.

Glory to gods the mighty and the lesser, glory to gods the younger and the elder; Let us, if we have power, pay the gods worship; no better prayer than that, ye gods, acknowledge.¹⁰

Dual Deities

One other peculiarity of Aryan mythology deserves notice. The names of two gods, such as Mitra and Varuna who had some characteristics alike were often formed into one compound noun (with a dual termination) and this compound became the name of a new deity. Thus there are hymns to Mitra and Varuna, and also to Mitra-varunau as one. The name of ‘Heaven and Earth’ (Dyava prithivi) is the most common of these compounds, of which there are about eighteen altogether.

It will be remembered that, in the later Puranic mythology, the legend of a deity half Vishnu and half Siva known as Harihara has an important place. The earlier Vedic practice may have furnished a precedent for it.

The Collective Deities

Sometimes all the gods are comprehended by one common name, Visve Devas, the All-gods, and prayers are addressed to them in their collective capacity.

Origin and Immortality of the Devas

The Vedic poets constantly speak of the gods as immortal, just as the Greek poets did. On the other hand, immortality is said to have been conferred on the devas by individual gods like Agni and Savitri or obtained by drinking Soma, or won by practising austerity (tapas) or by sacrifice. Indra and other gods are spoken of as unaging, but whether their immortality was considered by the poets to be unending there is, says Macdonell, no clear evidence in the Vedas. In the later literature the existence of the devas, like that of the whole universe, is limited to a cosmic age or kalpa.¹¹

There is similar vagueness about the origin of the gods. In many passages the gods are described as the offspring of the earth, sometimes as the offspring of other gods. Ushas, the dawn, is called the mother of the gods and Brahmanaspati their father. Soma is said to be the generator of Heaven, Earth, Agni, Surya, Indra and Vishnu. By an extreme paradox, Indra is said to have begotten his father and mother from his own body. There is no settled order. The same god is sometimes described as supreme over all other gods, and at other times as beneath them. There are as yet no regular genealogies, or marriages such as one finds in the Puranas. The father in one hymn may be the son in another; the brother becomes husband; the goddess described as the mother of a god in one, is his wife in another. No general statement can, therefore, be made. It was left to later times to trace all to a common origin in Brahma, the creator or to Isvara the creative personal force of the impersonal Parabrahma.

Character of the Devas

The Physical appearance of Vedic gods is supposed to be like that of men. Head, face, eyes, arms, hands, feet and other portions of human frame are all ascribed to them. But their forms are shadowy and their features or limbs are often used figuratively for their activities. Thus the tongue and limbs of Agni, the fire-god, are flames; the arms of Surya, the sun-god, are rays of light. There is no reason to think that the Aryans made images; certainly idols or images of the gods, or temples implying images are not named in the Rig-veda.

Anthropomorphisms are very common. Some of the gods are described as mail-clad warriors, helmeted, armed with mace and spear and bow, riding in luminous cars. Some of them, especially Indra, delight in the intoxicating Soma juice and in war. They are angry, seek to revenge insults or neglect, rejoice in sacrificial offerings. They go out on martial expeditions. They help the Aryans against the Dasyus, and the Aryans, successful in their conquests, naturally thought of the gods as beneficent. Among the gods the only deity in whom injurious features are at all prominent is Rudra.¹²

The gods of the early Aryans are far more like the warrior gods of the Norsemen than the deities that succeeded them in the later ages of Hinduism. The more detailed accounts of individual gods given below will enable the student to form his own opinion, but in general terms it can scarcely be better stated than in the words of Professor Macdonell.

The character of the Vedic gods is also moral. They are ’true’ and ’not deceitful’, being throughout the friends and guardians of honesty and virtue. But the divine morality only reflects the ethical standard of an early civilization. Thus even the alliance of Varuna, the most moral of the gods, with righteousness is not such as to prevent him from employing craft against the hostile and the deceitful man. Moral elevation is, on the whole, a less prominent characteristic of the gods than greatness and power.¹³

Classification of the Deities

It is very difficult to arrange the gods of the Vedic seers in any distinct classes because the worshippers of those gods themselves did not distinguish very clearly between them. Later thinkers easily read their own ideas into the words of earlier and simpler days. For instance, Yaska, in his Nirukta, the oldest commentary on the Vedas now in existence, says: ‘There are three deities, namely, Agni, whose place is on earth; Vayu, or Indra, whose place is in the air; and Surya, the sun, whose place is in the sky.’ ‘These gods might all be one—as a priest receives various names at various sacrifices.’ ‘Or,’ says he, ‘it may be, these gods are all distinct beings, for the praises addressed to them are distinct, and their appellations also.’ These theosophic speculations certainly were not accepted by most of the Vedic rishis, still less by the people who heard their songs at fairs and festivals. They divided their chief gods into three groups, according as they had their principal activity in the upper region of light, in the atmosphere or on the earth. These three groups were called the Upper, Middle and Lower. There were however many other divinities whom they worshipped or feared, and a seven-fold classification is, perhaps, as useful as any, provided that it is always remembered that such a classification is not rigid and does not mean that the Aryans believed in so many separate orders of divine beings. According to it the Vedic gods rank as follows:

i. Gods of the Upper World: Dyaus, Varuna, Surya, Savitri, Pushan, Vishnu, Ushas, Mitra, Aryaman and the Asvins.

ii. Gods of the Air: Vata, Indra, Rudra, Parjanya, the Bhrigus and the Maruts.

iii. Gods of the Earth: Agni, Soma, Yama, and Prithivi.

iv. Abstract deities: Aditi, Prajapati, Sraddha, Vach, Brihaspati, Ka, Kama, Visvedevas.

v. Inferior deities such as Tvastar, the Ribhus, the Gandhavars.

vi. Demon deities such as the Rakshasas.

vii. Ancestral spirits or Pitris.

Henotheism

But though such a classification is justifiable, each Vedic poet seems to exalt the particular god whom he happens to be singing to a position of supremacy and to endow him with all the attributes of supremacy. It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute. In the first hymn of the second book of the Rig-veda, Agni is called the ruler of the universe, the lord of men, the wise king, the father, the brother, the son, and friend of men; nay, all the powers and names of the others are distinctly ascribed to Agni. Indra is celebrated as the strongest god in the hymns as well as in the Brahmanas, and the burden of one of the songs of the tenth book is: Visvasmad Indra uttarah. ‘Indra is greater than all.’ Of Soma it is said that he was born great, and that he conquers every one. He is called the king of the world; he has the power to prolong the life of men, and is the maker of heaven and earth, of Agni, of Surya, of Indra and Vishnu. In the very next hymn, addressed to Varuna, it is Varuna who is, to the mind of the poet, supreme and all-mighty.¹⁴

In his writings Max Müller constantly referred to this and coined the word, henotheism, or kathenotheism to express what he regarded as a ‘peculiar character of the ancient Vedic religion.’ It denotes that each of several divinities is regarded as supreme, and worshipped without reference to the rest; or that the seers held at the belief in individual gods alternately or for the time being regarded as highest the one that was being worshipped, and that they therefore treated him as if he were absolutely independent and supreme, alone present to the mind of his worshipper. More modern scholars do not, however, consider this practice so remarkable as Max Müller did. They regard it more as a species of poetic license, by which a singer magnified the god whom he was invoking, rather than an evidence that the poet actually claimed that the god whom he was then reverencing was the superior of all others.

It must also be remembered that the minds of those early singers were not unlikely to attribute to the god whom they were adoring the characteristics of other gods of the same group when all were much alike. For instance, Dyaus was the sky as the ever-present light; Varuna was the sky as all-embracing or all-containing; Mitra was the sky as lighted up by the morning. Surya was the sun as shining in the sky. Savitri was the sun as bringing light and life. Agni was fire and light. Vishnu was the sun as striding with three steps across the sky. Indra appeared in the sky as the giver of rain; Rudra and the Maruts passed along the sky in thunder-storms; Vata and Vayu were the winds of the air. Hence it happens constantly that what is said of one deity can be and is appropriately said of another; the same epithets are shared by many; the same stories are told of different gods. In reaction against such confusion a kind of monotheism, an anticipation of the later Vedanta, appears in a few verses. It amounts to a suggestion that in reality all the gods are one.

One poet says:

They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, and he is heavenly, nobly-winged Garutman (i.e. the sun). To what is one, sages give many a title: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvam.¹⁵

And a verse in the Atharva-veda is as emphatic:

In the evening Agni becomes Varuna; he becomes Mitra when rising in the morning; having become Savitri he passes through the sky; having become Indra he warms the heaven in the middle.¹⁶

It thus becomes quite natural that Surya, the sun, should be identified with Indra and Agni; Savitri with Mitra and Pushan; Indra with Varuna: and Dyaus the sky, with Parjanya, the rain-god.¹⁷

Footnotes