CHAPTER VI.
THE RIG VEDA (CONCLUDED).—YAMA AND OTHER GODS, VEDIC PANTHEISM, ESCHATOLOGY.
In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great gods of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end of this period. With the discovery of sur[=a], humor ex hordeo (oryzaque; Weber, V[=a]japeya, p. 19), and the difficulty of obtaining the original soma-plant (for the plant used later for soma, the asclepias acida, or sarcostemma viminale, does not grow in the Punj[=a]b region, and cannot have been the original soma), the status of soma became changed. While sur[=a] became the drink of the people, soma, despite the fact that it was not now so agreeable a liquor, became reserved, from its old associations, as the priests' (gods') drink, a sacrosanct beverage, not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priest, except as it kept up the rite.
It has been shown that these gods, earthly in habitation, absorbed the powers of the older and physically higher divinities. The ideas that clustered about the latter were transferred to the former. The altar-fire, Agni, is at once earth-fire, lightning, and sun. The drink soma is identified with the heavenly drink that refreshes the earth, and from its color is taken at last to be the terrestrial form of its aqueous prototype, the moon, which is not only yellow, but even goes through cloud-meshes just as soma goes through the sieve, with all the other points of comparison that priestly ingenuity can devise.
Of different sort altogether from these gods is the ancient Indo-Iranian figure that now claims attention. The older religion had at least one object of devotion very difficult to reduce to terms of a nature-religion.
YAMA
Exactly as the Hindu had a half-divine ancestor, Manu, who by the later priests is regarded as of solar origin, while more probably he is only the abstract Adam (man), the progenitor of the race; so in Yama the Hindu saw the primitive "first of mortals." While, however, Mitra, Dyaus, and other older nature-gods, pass into a state of negative or almost forgotten activity, Yama, even in the later epic period, still remains a potent sovereign—the king of the dead.
In the Avesta Yima is the son of the 'wide-gleaming' Vivanghvant, the sun, and here it is the sun that first prepares the soma (haoma) for man. And so, too, in the Rig Veda it is Yama the son of Vivasvant (X. 58. 1; 60. 10) who first "extends the web" of (soma) sacrifice (VII. 33. 9, 12). The Vedic poet, not influenced by later methods of interpretation, saw in Yama neither sun nor moon, nor any other natural phenomenon, for thus he sings, differentiating Yama from them all: "I praise with a song Agni, P[=u]shan, Sun and Moon, Yama in heaven, Trita, Wind, Dawn, the Ray of Light, the Twin Horsemen" (X. 64. 3); and again: "Deserving of laudation are Heaven and Earth, the four-limbed Agni, Yama, Aditi," etc. (X. 92. 11).
Yama is regarded as a god, although in the Rig Veda he is called only 'king' (X. 14. 1, 11); but later he is expressly a god, and this is implied, as Ehni shows, even in the Rig Veda: 'a god found Agni' and 'Yama found Agni' (X. 51. 1 ff.). His primitive nature was that of the 'first mortal that died,' in the words of the Atharva Veda. It is true, indeed, that at a later period even gods are spoken of as originally 'mortal,'[1] but this is a conception alien from the early notions of the Veda, where 'mortal' signifies no more than 'man.' Yama was the first mortal, and he lives in the sky, in the home that "holds heroes," i.e., his abode is where dead heroes congregate (I. 35. 6; X. 64. 3)[2]. The fathers that died of old are cared for by him as he sits drinking with the gods beneath a fair tree (X. 135. 1-7). The fire that devours the corpse is invoked to depart thither (X. 16. 9). This place is not very definitely located, but since, according to one prevalent view, the saints guard the sun, and since Yama's abode in the sky is comparable with the sun in one or two passages, it is probable that the general idea was that the departed entered the sun and there Yama received him (I. 105. 9, 'my home is there where are the sun's rays'; X. 154. 4-5, 'the dead shall go, O Yama, to the fathers, the seers that guard the sun'). 'Yama's abode' is the same with 'sky' (X. 123. 6); and when it is said, 'may the fathers hold up the pillar (in the grave), and may Yama build a seat for thee there' (X. 18. 13), this refers, not to the grave, but to heaven. And it is said that 'Yama's seat is what is called the gods' home' (X. 135. 7)[3]. But Yama does not remain in the sky. He comes, as do other Powers, to the sacrifice, and is invited to seat himself 'with Angirasas and the fathers' at the feast, where he rejoices with them (X. 14. 3-4; 15. 8). And either because Agni devours corpses for Yama, or because of Agni's part in the sacrifice which Yama so joyfully attends, therefore Agni is especially mentioned as Yama's friend (X. 21. 5), or even his priest (ib. 52. 3). Yama stands in his relation to the dead so near to death that 'to go on Yama's path' is to go on the path of death; and battle is called 'Yama's strife.' It is even possible that in one passage Yama is directly identified with death (X. 165. 4, 'to Yama be reverence, to death'; I. 38. 5; ib. 116. 2)[4]. There is always a close connection between Varuna and Yama, and perhaps it is owing to this that parallel to 'Varuna's fetters' is found also 'Yama's fetter,' i.e., death (x. 97. 16).
As Yama was the first to die, so was he the first to teach man the road to immortality, which lies through sacrifice, whereby man attains to heaven and to immortality. Hence the poet says, 'we revere the immortality born of Yama' (i. 83. 5). This, too, is the meaning of the mystic verse which speaks of the sun as the heavenly courser 'given by Yama,' for, in giving the way to immortality, Yama gives also the sun-abode to them that become immortal. In the same hymn the sun is identified with Yama as he is with Trita (i. 163. 3). This particular identification is due, however, rather to the developed pantheistic idea which obtains in the later hymns. A parallel is found in the next hymn: "They speak of Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni … that which is one, the priests speak of in many ways, and call him Agni, Yama, Fire" (or Wind, i. 164. 46).
Despite the fact that one Vedic poet speaks of Yama's name as 'easy to understand' (x. 12. 6), no little ingenuity has been spent on it, as well as on the primitive conception underlying his personality. Etymologically, his name means Twin, and this is probably the real meaning, for his twin sister Yami is also a Vedic personage. The later age, regarding Yama as a restrainer and punisher of the wicked, derived the name from yam the restrainer or punisher, but such an idea is quite out of place in the province of Vedic thought. The Iranian Yima also has a sister of like name, although she does not appear till late in the literature.
That Yama's father is the sun, Vivasvant (Savitar, 'the artificer,' Tvashtar, x. 10. 4-5),[5] is clearly enough stated in the Rik; and that he was the first mortal, in the Atharvan. Men come from Yama, and Yama comes from the sun as 'creator,' just as men elsewhere come from Adam and Adam comes from the Creator. But instead of an Hebraic Adam and Eve there are in India a Yama and Yam[=i], brother and sister (wife), who, in the one hymn in which the latter is introduced (loc. cit.), indulge in a moral conversation on the propriety of wedlock between brother and sister. This hymn is evidently a protest against a union that was unobjectionable to an older generation. In the Yajur Veda Yami is wife and sister both. But sometimes, in the varying fancies of the Vedic poets, the artificer Tvashtar is differentiated from Vivasvant, the sun; as he is in another passage, where Tvashtar gives to Vivasvant his daughter, and she is the mother of Yama[6].
That men are the children of Yama is seen in X. 13. 4, where it is said, 'Yama averted death for the gods; he did not avert death for (his) posterity.' In the Brahmanic tradition men derive from the sun (T[=a]itt. S. VI. 5. 6. 2[7]) So, in the Iranian belief, Yima is looked upon, according to some scholars, as the first man. The funeral hymn to Yama is as follows:
Him who once went over the great mountains[8] and spied out a path for many, the son of Vivasvant, who collects men, King Yama, revere ye with oblations. Yama the first found us a way … There where our old fathers are departed…. Yama is magnified with the Angirasas…. Sit here, O Yama, with the Angirasas and with the fathers…. Rejoice, O king, in this oblation. Come, O Yama, with the venerable Angirasas. I call thy father, Vivasvant, sit down at this sacrifice.
And then, turning to the departed soul:
Go forth, go forth on the old paths where are gone our old fathers; thou shalt see both joyous kings, Yama and God Varuna. Unite with the fathers, with Yama, with the satisfaction of desires, in highest heaven…. Yama will give a resting place to this spirit. Run past, on a good path, the two dogs of Saram[=a], the four-eyed, spotted ones; go unto the fathers who rejoice with Yama.
Several things are here noteworthy. In the first place, the Atharva Veda reads, "who first of mortals died[9]," and this is the meaning of the Rig Veda version, although, as was said above, the mere fact that Varuna is called a god and Yama a king proves nothing[10]. But it is clearly implied here that he who crossed the mountains and 'collected men,' as does Yima in the Iranian legend, is an ancient king, as it is also implied that he led the way to heaven. The dogs of Yama are described in such a way as to remind one of the dogs that guard the path the dead have to pass in the Iranian legend, and of Kerberus, with whose very name the adjective 'spotted' has been compared[11]. The dogs are elsewhere described as white and brown and as barking (VII. 55. 2), and in further verses of the hymn just quoted (X. 14) they are called "thy guardian dogs, O Yama, the four-eyed ones who guard the path, who look on men … broad-nosed, dark messengers of Yama, who run among the people."
These dogs are due to the same fantasy that creates a Kerberus, the Iranian dogs[12], or other guardians of the road that leads to heaven. The description is too minute to make it probable that the Vedic poet understood them to be 'sun and moon,' as the later Brahmanical ingenuity explains them, and as they have been explained by modern scholarship. It is not possible that the poet, had he had in mind any connection between the dogs and the sun and moon (or 'night and day'), would have described them as 'barking' or as 'broad-nosed and dark'; and all interpretation of Yama's dogs must rest on the interpretation of Yama himself[13].
Yama is not mentioned elsewhere[14] in the Rig Veda, except in the statement that 'metres rest on Yama,' and in the closing verses of the burial hymn: "For Yama press the soma, for Yama pour oblation; the sacrifice goes to Yama; he shall extend for us a long life among the gods," where the pun on Yama (yamad á), in the sense of 'stretch out,' shows that as yet no thought of 'restrainer' was in the poet's mind, although the sense of 'twin' is lost from the name.
In recent years Hillebrandt argues that because the Manes are connected with Soma (as the moon), and because Yama was the first to die, therefore Yama was the moon. Ehni, on the other hand, together with Bergaigne and some other scholars, takes Yama to be the sun. Müller calls him the 'setting-sun[15].' The argument from the Manes applies better to the sun than to the moon, but it is not conclusive. The Hindus in the Vedic age, as later, thought of the Manes living in stars, moon, sun, and air; and, if they were not good Manes but dead sinners, in the outer edge of the universe or under ground. In short, they are located in every conceivable place[17].
The Yama, 'who collects people,' has been rightly compared with the Yima, who 'made a gathering of the people,' but it is doubtful whether one should see in this an Aryan trait; for [Greek: Aidaes Agaesilaos] is not early and popular, but late (Aeschylean), and the expression may easily have arisen independently in the mind of the Greek poet. From a comparative point of view, in the reconstruction of Yama there is no conclusive evidence which will permit one to identify his original character either with sun or moon. Much rather he appears to be as he is in the Rig Veda, a primitive king, not historically so, but poetically, the first man, fathered of the sun, to whom he returns, and in whose abode he collects his offspring after their inevitable death on earth. In fact, in Yama there is the ideal side of ancestor-worship. He is a poetic image, the first of all fathers, and hence their type and king. Yama's name is unknown outside of the Indo-Iranian circle, and though Ehni seeks to find traces of him in Greece and elsewhere,[18] this scholar's identifications fail, because he fails to note that similar ideas in myths are no proof of their common origin.
It has been suggested that in the paradise of Yama over the mountains there is a companion-piece to the hyperboreans, whose felicity is described by Pindar. The nations that came from the north still kept in legend a recollection of the land from whence they came. This suggestion cannot, of course, be proved, but it is the most probable explanation yet given of the first paradise to which the dead revert. In the late Vedic period, when the souls of the dead were not supposed to linger on earth with such pleasure as in the sky, Yama's abode is raised to heaven. Later still, when to the Hindu the south was the land of death, Yama's hall of judgment is again brought down to earth and transferred to the 'southern district.'
The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times becomes the dread king of horrible hells. Despite some testimony to the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is the antithesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.
The most important gods of the era of the Rig Veda we now have reviewed. But before passing on to the next period it should be noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are bh[=u]ts, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism assumes a like divinity in all things, this kind of theism assumes that everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless it is found.
Another class of divinities includes abstractions, generally female, such as Infinity, Piety, Abundance, with the barely-mentioned Gung[=u], R[=a]k[=a], etc. (which may be moon-phases). The most important of these abstractions[22] is 'the lord of strength,' a priestly interpretation of Indra, interpreted as religious strength or prayer, to whom are accredited all of Indra's special acts. Hillebrandt interprets this god, Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati, as the moon; Müller, somewhat doubtfully, as fire; while Roth will not allow that Brihaspati has anything to do with natural phenomena, but considers him to have been from the beginning 'lord of prayer.' With this view we partly concur, but we would make the important modification that the god was lord of prayer only as priestly abstraction Indra in his higher development. It is from this god is come probably the head of the later trinity, Brahm[=a], through personified brahma, power; prayer, with its philosophical development into the Absolute. Noteworthy is the fact that some of the Vedic Aryans, despite his high pretensions, do not quite like Brihaspati, and look on him as a suspicious novelty. If one study Brihaspati in the hymns, it will be difficult not to see in him simply a sacerdotal Indra. He breaks the demon's power; crushes the foes of man; consumes the demons with a sharp bolt; disperses darkness; drives forth the 'cows'; gives offspring and riches; helps in battle; discovers Dawn and Agni; has a band (like Maruts) singing about him; he is red and golden, and is identified with fire. Although 'father of gods,' he is begotten of Tvashtar, the artificer.[23]
Weber has suggested (V[=a]japeya Sacrifice, p. 15), that Brihaspati takes Indra's place, and this seems to be the true solution, Indra as interpreted mystically by priests. In RV. i. 190, Brihaspati is looked upon by 'sinners' as a new god of little value. Other minor deities can be mentioned only briefly, chiefly that the extent of the pantheon may be seen. For the history of religion they are of only collective importance. The All-gods play an important part in the sacrifice, a group of 'all the gods,' a priestly manufacture to the end that no god may be omitted in laudations that would embrace all the gods. The later priests attempt to identify these gods with the clans, 'the All-gods are the clans' (Çat. Br. v. 5. 1.10), on the basis of a theological pun, the clans, viças, being equated with the word for all, viçve. Some modern scholars follow these later priests, but without reason. Had these been special clan-gods, they would have had special names, and would not have appeared in a group alone.
The later epic has a good deal to say about some lovely nymphs called the Apsarasas, of whom it mentions six as chief (Urvaç[=i], Menak[=a], etc.).[24] They fall somewhat in the epic from their Vedic estate, but they are never more than secondary figures, love-goddesses, beloved of the Gandharvas who later are the singing guardians of the moon, and, like the lunar stations, twenty-seven in number. The Rik knows at first but one Gandharva (an inferior genius, mentioned in but one family-book), who guards Soma's path, and, when Soma becomes the moon, is identified with him, ix. 86. 36. As in the Avesta, Gandharva is (the moon as) an evil spirit also; but always as a second-rate power, to whom are ascribed magic (and madness, later). He has virtually no cult except in soma-hymns, and shows clearly the first Aryan conception of the moon as a demoniac power, potent over women, and associated with waters.
Mountains, and especially rivers, are holy, and of course are deified. Primitive belief generally deifies rivers. But in the great river-hymn in the Rig Veda there is probably as much pure poetry as prayer. The Vedic poet half believed in the rivers' divinity, and sings how they 'rush forth like armies,' but it will not do to inquire too strictly in regard to his belief.
He was a poet, and did not expect to be catechized. Of female divinities there are several of which the nature is doubtful. As Dawn or Storm have been interpreted Saram[=a] and Sarany[=u], both meaning 'runner.' The former is Indra's dog, and her litter is the dogs of Yama. One little poem, rather than hymn, celebrates the 'wood-goddess' in pretty verses of playful and descriptive character.
Long before there was any formal recognition of the dogma that all gods are one, various gods had been identified by the Vedic poets. Especially, as most naturally, was this the case when diverse gods having different names were similar in any way, such as Indra and Agni, whose glory is fire; or Varuna and Mitra, whose seat is the sky. From this casual union of like pairs comes the peculiar custom of invoking two gods as one. But even in the case of gods not so radically connected, if their functions were mutually approximate, each in turn became credited with his neighbor's acts. If the traits were similar which characterized each, if the circles of activity overlapped at all, then those divinities that originally were tangent to each other gradually became concentric, and eventually were united. And so the lines between the gods were wiped out, as it were, by their conceptions crowding upon one another. There was another factor, however, in the development of this unconscious, or, at least, unacknowledged, pantheism. Aided by the likeness or identity of attributes in Indra, Savitar, Agni, Mitra, and other gods, many of which were virtually the same under a different designation, the priests, ever prone to extravagance of word, soon began to attribute, regardless of strict propriety, every power to every god. With the exception of some of the older divinities, whose forms, as they are less complex, retain throughout the simplicity of their primitive character, few gods escaped this adoration, which tended to make them all universally supreme, each being endowed with all the attributes of godhead. One might think that no better fate could happen to a god than thus to be magnified. But when each god in the pantheon was equally glorified, the effect on the whole was disastrous. In fact, it was the death of the gods whom it was the intention of the seers to exalt. And the reason is plain. From this universal praise it resulted that the individuality of each god became less distinct; every god was become, so to speak, any god, so far as his peculiar attributes made him a god at all, so that out of the very praise that was given to him and his confreres alike there arose the idea of the abstract godhead, the god who was all the gods, the one god. As a pure abstraction one finds thus Aditi, as equivalent to 'all the gods,'[25] and then the more personal idea of the god that is father of all, which soon becomes the purely personal All-god. It is at this stage where begins conscious premeditated pantheism, which in its first beginnings is more like monotheism, although in India there is no monotheism which does not include devout polytheism, as will be seen in the review of the formal philosophical systems of religion.
It is thus that we have attempted elsewhere[26] to explain that phase of Hindu religion which Müller calls henotheism.
Müller, indeed, would make of henotheism a new religion, but this, the worshipping of each divinity in turn as if it were the greatest and even the only god recognized, is rather the result of the general tendency to exaltation, united with pantheistic beginnings. Granting that pure polytheism is found in a few hymns, one may yet say that this polytheism, with an accompaniment of half-acknowledged chrematheism, passed soon into the belief that several divinities were ultimately and essentially but one, which may be described as homoiotheism; and that the poets of the Rig Veda were unquestionably esoterically unitarians to a much greater extent and in an earlier period than has generally been acknowledged. Most of the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed under the influence of that unification of deities and tendency to a quasi-monotheism, which eventually results both in philosophical pantheism, and in the recognition at the same time of a personal first cause. To express the difference between Hellenic polytheism and the polytheism of the Rig Veda the latter should be called, if by any new term, rather by a name like pantheistic polytheism, than by the somewhat misleading word henotheism. What is novel in it is that it represents the fading of pure polytheism and the engrafting, upon a polytheistic stock, of a speculative homoiousian tendency soon to bud out as philosophic pantheism.
The admission that other gods exist does not nullify the attitude of tentative monotheism. "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?" asks Moses, and his father-in-law, when converted to the new belief, says: "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods."[27] But this is not the quasi-monotheism of the Hindu, to whom the other gods were real and potent factors, individually distinct from the one supreme god, who represents the All-god, but is at once abstract and concrete.
Pantheism in the Rig Veda comes out clearly only in one or two passages: "The priests represent in many ways the (sun) bird that is one"; and (cited above) "They speak of him as Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, … that which is but one they call variously." So, too, in the Atharvan it is said that Varuna (here a pantheistic god) is "in the little drop of water,"[28] as in the Rik the spark of material fire is identified with the sun.
The new belief is voiced chiefly in that portion of the Rig Veda which appears to be latest and most Brahmanic in tone.
Here a supreme god is described under the name of "Lord of Beings," the "All-maker," "The Golden Germ," the "God over gods, the spirit of their being" (x. 121). The last, a famous hymn, Müller entitles "To the Unknown God." It may have been intended, as has been suggested, for a theological puzzle,[29] but its language evinces that in whatever form it is couched—each verse ends with the refrain, 'To what god shall we offer sacrifice?' till the last verse answers the question, saying, 'the Lord of beings'—it is meant to raise the question of a supreme deity and leave it unanswered in terms of a nature-religion, though the germ is at bottom fire: "In the beginning arose the Golden Germ; as soon as born he became the Lord of All. He established earth and heaven—to what god shall we offer sacrifice? He who gives breath, strength, whose command the shining gods obey; whose shadow is life and death…. When the great waters went everywhere holding the germ and generating light, then arose from them the one spirit (breath) of the gods…. May he not hurt us, he the begetter of earth, the holy one who begot heaven … Lord of beings, thou alone embracest all things …"
In this closing period of the Rig Veda—a period which in many ways, the sudden completeness of caste, the recognition of several Vedas, etc., is much farther removed from the beginning of the work than it is from the period of Brahmanic speculation—philosophy is hard at work upon the problems of the origin of gods and of being. As in the last hymn, water is the origin of all things; out of this springs fire, and the wind which is the breath of god. So in the great hymn of creation: "There was then neither not-being nor being; there was no atmosphere, no sky. What hid (it)? Where and in the protection of what? Was it water, deep darkness? There was no death nor immortality. There was no difference between night and day. That One breathed … nothing other than this or above it existed. Darkness was concealed in darkness in the beginning. Undifferentiated water was all this (universe)." Creation is then declared to have arisen by virtue of desire, which, in the beginning was the origin of mind;[30] and "the gods," it is said further, "were created after this." Whether entity springs from non-entity or vice versa is discussed in another hymn of the same book.[31] The most celebrated of the pantheistic hymns is that in which the universe is regarded as portions of the deity conceived as the primal Person: "Purusha (the Male Person) is this all, what has been and will be … all created things are a fourth of him; that which is immortal in the sky is three-fourths of him." The hymn is too well known to be quoted entire. All the castes, all gods, all animals, and the three (or four) Vedas are parts of him.[32]
Such is the mental height to which the seers have raised themselves before the end of the Rig Veda. The figure of the Father-god, Praj[=a]pati, 'lord of beings,' begins here; at first an epithet of Savitar, and finally the type of the head of a pantheon, such as one finds him to be in the Br[=a]hmanas. In one hymn only (x. 121) is Praj[=a]pati found as the personal Father-god and All-god. At a time when philosophy created the one Universal Male Person, the popular religion, keeping pace, as far as it could, with philosophy, invented the more anthropomorphized, more human, Father-god—whose name is ultimately interpreted as an interrogation, God Who? This trait lasts from now on through all speculation. The philosopher conceived of a first source. The vulgar made it a personal god.
One of the most remarkable hymns of this epoch is that on V[=a]c,
Speech, or The Word. Weber has sought in this the prototype of the
Logos doctrine (below). The Word, V[=a]c (feminine) is introduced as
speaking (x. 125):
I wander with the Rudras, with the Vasus,[33] with the
[=A]dityas, and with all the gods; I support Mitra,
Va['r]una, Indra-Agni, and the twin Açvins … I give wealth
to him that gives sacrifice, to him that presses the soma.
I am the queen, the best of those worthy of sacrifice …
The gods have put me in many places … I am that through
which one eats, breathes, sees, and hears … Him that I
love I make strong, to be a priest, a seer, a wise man. 'Tis
I bend Rudra's bow to hit the unbeliever; I prepare war for
the people; I am entered into heaven and earth. I beget the
father of this (all) on the height; my place is in the
waters, the sea; thence I extend myself among all creatures
and touch heaven with my crown. Even I blow like the wind,
encompassing all creatures. Above heaven and above earth, so
great am I grown in majesty.
This is almost Vedantic pantheism with the Vishnuite doctrine of 'special grace' included.
The moral tone of this period—if period it may be called—may best be examined after one has studied the idea which the Vedic Hindu has formed of the life hereafter. The happiness of heaven will be typical of what he regards as best here. Bliss beyond the grave depends in turn upon the existence of the spirit after death, and, that the reader may understand this, we must say a few words in regard to the Manes, or fathers dead. "Father Manu," as he is called,[34] was the first 'Man.' Subsequently he is the secondary parent as a kind of Noah; but Yama, in later tradition his brother, has taken his place as norm of the departed fathers, Pitaras.
These Fathers (Manes), although of different sort than the gods, are yet divine and have many godly powers, granting prayers and lending aid, as may be seen from this invocation: "O Fathers, may the sky-people grant us life; may we follow the course of the living" (x. 57. 5). One whole hymn is addressed to these quasi-divinities (x. 15):
Arise may the lowest, the highest, the middlemost Fathers, those worthy of the soma, who without harm have entered into the spirit (-world); may these Fathers, knowing the seasons, aid us at our call. This reverence be to-day to the Fathers, who of old and afterwards departed; those who have settled in an earthly sphere,[35] or among peoples living in fair places (the gods?). I have found the gracious Fathers, the descendant(s) and the wide-step[36] of Vishnu; those who, sitting on the sacrificial straw, willingly partake of the pressed drink, these are most apt to come hither…. Come hither with blessings, O Fathers; may they come hither, hear us, address and bless us…. May ye not injure us for whatever impiety we have as men committed…. With those who are our former Fathers, those worthy of soma, who are come to the soma drink, the best (fathers), may Yama rejoicing, willingly with them that are willing, eat the oblations as much as is agreeable (to them). Come running, O Agni, with these (fathers), who thirsted among the gods and hastened hither, finding oblations and praised with songs. These gracious ones, the real poets, the Fathers that seat themselves at the sacrificial heat; who are real eaters of oblation; drinkers of oblation; and are set together on one chariot with Indra and the gods. Come, O Agni, with these, a thousand, honored like gods, the ancient, the original Fathers who seat themselves at the sacrificial heat…. Thou, Agni, didst give the oblations to the Fathers, that eat according to their custom; do thou (too) eat, O god, the oblation offered (to thee). Thou knowest, O thou knower (or finder) of beings, how many are the Fathers—those who are here, and who are not here, of whom we know, and of whom we know not. According to custom eat thou the well-made sacrifice. With those who, burned in fire or not burned, (now) enjoy themselves according to custom in the middle of the sky, do thou, being the lord, form (for us) a spirit life, a body according to (our) wishes.[37]
Often the Fathers are invoked in similar language in the hymn to the "All-gods" mentioned above, and occasionally no distinction is to be noticed between the powers and attributes of the Fathers and those of the gods. The Fathers, like the luminous gods, "give light" (x. 107. 1). Exactly like the gods, they are called upon to aid the living, and even 'not to harm' (iii. 55. 2; x. 15. 6). According to one verse, the Fathers have not attained the greatness of the gods, who impart strength only to the gods.[38]
The Fathers are kept distinct from the gods. When the laudations bestowed upon the former are of unequivocal character there is no confusion between the two.[39]
The good dead, to get to the paradise awaiting them, pass over water (X. 63. 10), and a bridge (ix. 41. 2). Here, by the gift of the gods, not by inherent capacity, they obtain immortality. He that believes on Agni, sings: "Thou puttest the mortal in highest immortality, O Agni"; and, accordingly, there is no suggestion that heavenly joys may cease; nor is there in this age any notion of a Götterdämmerung. Immortality is described as "continuing life in the highest sky," another proof that when formulated the doctrine was that the soul of the dead lives in heaven or in the sun.[40]
Other cases of immortality granted by different gods are recorded by Muir and Zimmer. Yet in one passage the words, "two paths I have heard of the Fathers (exist), of the gods and of mortals," may mean that the Fathers go the way of mortals or that of gods, rather than, as is the usual interpretation, that mortals have two paths, one of the Fathers and one of the gods,[41] for the dead may live on earth or in the air as well as in heaven. When a good man dies his breath, it is said, goes to the wind, his eye to the sun, etc.[42]—each part to its appropriate prototype—while the "unborn part" is carried "to the world of the righteous," after having been burned and heated by the funeral fire. All these parts are restored to the soul, however, and Agni and Soma return to it what has been injured. With this Muir compares a passage in the Atharva Veda where it is said that the Manes in heaven rejoice with all their limbs.[43] We dissent, therefore, wholly from Barth, who declares that the dead are conceived of as "resting forever in the tomb, the narrow house of clay." The only passage cited to prove this is X. 18. 10-13, where are the words (addressed to the dead man at the burial): "Go now to mother earth … she shall guard thee from destruction's lap … Open wide, O earth, be easy of access; as a mother her son cover this man, O earth," etc. Ending with the verse quoted above: "May the Fathers hold the pillar and Yama there build thee a seat."[44] The following is also found in the Rig Veda bearing on this point: the prayer that one may meet his parents after death; the statement that a generous man goes to the gods; and a suggestion of the later belief that one wins immortality by means of a son.[45]
The joys of paradise are those of earth; and heaven is thus described, albeit in a late hymn:[46] "Where is light inexhaustible; in the world where is placed the shining sky; set me in this immortal, unending world, O thou that purifiest thyself (Soma); where is king (Yama), the son of Vivasvant, and the paradise of the sky;[47] where are the flowing waters; there make me immortal. Where one can go as he will; in the third heaven, the third vault of the sky; where are worlds full of light, there make me immortal; where are wishes and desires and the red (sun)'s highest place; where one can follow his own habits [48] and have satisfaction; there make me immortal; where exist delight, joy, rejoicing, and joyance; where wishes are obtained, there make me immortal."[49] Here, as above, the saints join the Fathers, 'who guard the sun.'
There is a 'bottomless darkness' occasionally referred to as a place where evil spirits are to be sent by the gods; and a 'deep place' is mentioned as the portion of 'evil, false, untruthful men'; while Soma casts into 'a hole' (abyss) those that are irreligious.[50]
As darkness is hell to the Hindu, and as in all later time the demons are spirits of darkness, it is rather forced not to see in these allusions a misty hell, without torture indeed, but a place for the bad either 'far away,' as it is sometimes said (par[=a]váti), or 'deep down,' 'under three earths,' exactly as the Greek has a hell below and one on the edge of the earth. Ordinarily, however, the gods are requested simply to annihilate offenders. It is plain, as Zimmer says, from the office of Yama's dogs, that they kept out of paradise unworthy souls; so that the annihilation cannot have been imagined to be purely corporeal. But heaven is not often described, and hell never, in this period. Yet, when the paradise desired is described, it is a place where earthly joys are prolonged and intensified. Zimmer argues that a race which believes in good for the good hereafter must logically believe in punishment for the wicked, and Scherman, strangely enough, agrees with this pedantic opinion.[51] If either of these scholars had looked away from India to the western Indians he would have seen that, whereas almost all American Indians believe in a happy hereafter for good warriors, only a very few tribes have any belief in punishment for the bad. At most a Niflheim awaits the coward. Weber thinks the Aryans already believed in a personal immortality, and we agree with him. Whitney's belief that hell was not known before the Upanishad period (in his translations of the Katha Upanishad) is correct only if by hell torture is meant, and if the Atharvan is later than this Upanishad, which is improbable.
The good dead in the Rig Veda return with Yama to the sacrifice to enjoy the soma and viands prepared for them by their descendants. Hence the whole belief in the necessity of a son in order to the obtaining of a joyful hereafter. What the rite of burial was to the Greek, a son was to the Hindu, a means of bliss in heaven. Roth apparently thinks that the Rig Veda's heaven is one that can best be described in Dr. Watt's hymn:
There is a land of pure delight
Where saints immortal reign,
Eternal day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain;
and that especial stress should be laid on the word 'pure.' But there is very little teaching of personal purity in the Veda, and the poet who hopes for a heaven where he is to find 'longing women,' 'desire and its fulfillment' has in mind, in all probability, purely impure delights. It is not to be assumed that the earlier morality surpassed that of the later day, when, even in the epic, the hero's really desired heaven is one of drunkenness and women ad libitum. Of the 'good man' in the Rig Veda are demanded piety toward gods and manes and liberality to priests; truthfulness and courage; and in the end of the work there is a suggestion of ascetic 'goodness' by means of tapas, austerity.[52] Grassman cites one hymn as dedicated to
'Mercy.' It is really (not a hymn and) not on mercy, but a poem praising generosity. This generosity, however (and in general this is true of the whole people), is not general generosity, but liberality to the priests.[53] The blessings asked for are wealth (cattle, horses, gold, etc.), virile power, male children ('heroic offspring') and immortality, with its accompanying joys. Once there is a tirade against the friend that is false to his friend (truth in act as well as in word);[54] once only, a poem on concord, which seems to partake of the nature of an incantation.
Incantations are rare in the Rig Veda, and appear to be looked upon as objectionable. So in VII. 104 the charge of a 'magician' is furiously repudiated; yet do an incantation against a rival wife, a mocking hymn of exultation after subduing rivals, and a few other hymns of like sort show that magical practices were well known.[55]
The sacrifice occupies a high place in the religion of the Rig Veda, but it is not all-important, as it is later. Nevertheless, the same presumptuous assumption that the gods depend on earthly sacrifice is often made; the result of which, even before the collection was complete (IV. 50), was to teach that gods and men depended on the will of the wise men who knew how properly to conduct a sacrifice, the key-note of religious pride in the Brahmanic period.
Indra depends on the sacrificial soma to accomplish his great works. The gods first got power through the sacrificial fire and soma.[56] That images of the gods were supposed to be powerful may be inferred from the late verses, "who buys this Indra," etc. (above), but allusions to idolatry are elsewhere extremely doubtful.[57]
* * * * *
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Compare T[=a]itt. S. VII. 4.2.1. The gods win immortality by means of 'sacrifice' in this later priest-ridden period.]
[Footnote 2: Ludwig (IV. p. 134) wrongly understands a hell
here.]
[Footnote 3: 'Yama's seat' is here what it is in the epic,
not a chapel (Pischel), but a home.]
[Footnote 4: This may mean 'to Yama (and) to death.' In the
Atharva Veda, V. 24. 13-14, it is said that Death is the
lord of men; Yama, of the Manes.]
[Footnote 5: It is here said, also, that the 'Gandharva in the waters and the water-woman' are the ties of consanguinity between Yama and Yam[=i], which means, apparently, that their parents were Moon and Water; a late idea, as in viii. 48. 13 (unique).]
[Footnote 6: The passage, X. 17, 1-2, is perhaps meant as a riddle, as Bloomfield suggests (JAOS. XV. p. 172). At any rate, it is still a dubious passage. Compare Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, I. p. 503.]
[Footnote 7: Cited by Scherman, Visionslitteratur, p. 147.]
[Footnote 8: Possibly, 'streams.']
[Footnote 9: AV. XVIII. 3. 13.]
[Footnote 10: Compare AV. VI. 88. 2: "King Varuna and God
Brihaspati," where both are gods.]
[Footnote 11: [Greek: Kerberos](=Çabala)=Ç[=a]rvara.
Saram[=a] is storm or dawn, or something else that means
'runner.']
[Footnote 12: Here the fiend is expelled by a four-eyed dog
or a white one which has yellow ears. See the Sacred Books
of the East, IV. p. IXXXVII.]
[Footnote 13: Scherman proposes an easy solution, namely to
cut the description in two, and make only part of it refer
to the dogs! (loc. cit. p. 130).]
[Footnote 14: The dogs may be meant in I. 29. 3, but compare
II. 31. 5. Doubtful is I. 66. 8, according to Bergaigne,
applied to Yama as fire.]
[Footnote 15: India, p. 224.]
[Footnote 17: Barth, p. 23, cites I. 123. 6; X. 107. 2; 82. 2, to prove that stars are souls of dead men. These passages do not prove the point, but it may be inferred from X. 68. 11. Later on it is a received belief. A moon-heaven is found only in VIII. 48.]
[Footnote 18: Especially with Ymir in Scandinavian mythology.]
[Footnote 19: Visionslitteratur, 1892.]
[Footnote 20: Henotheism in the Rig Veda, p. 81.]
[Footnote 21: This religious phase is often confounded loosely with pantheism, but the distinction should be observed. Parkman speaks of (American) Indian 'pantheism'; and Barth speaks of ritualistic 'pantheism,' meaning thereby the deification of different objects used in sacrifice (p. 37, note). But chrematheism is as distinct from pantheism as it is from fetishism.]
[Footnote 22: Some seem to be old; thus Aramati, piety, has an Iranian representative, [=A]rma[=i]t[=i]. As masculine abstractions are to be added Anger, Death, etc.]
[Footnote 23: Compare iv. 50; ii. 23 and 24; v. 43. 12; x. 68. 9; ii. 26. 3; 23. 17; x. 97. 15. For interpretation compare Hillebrandt, Ved. Myth. i. 409-420; Bergaigne, La Rel, Vèd. i. 304; Muir, OST, v. 272 ff. (with previous literature).]
[Footnote 24: Mbh[=a].i. 74. 68. Compare Holtzmann, ZDMG. xxxiii. 631 ff.]
[Footnote 25: i. 89. 10: "Aditi is all the gods and men;
Aditi is whatever has been born; Aditi is whatever will be
born."]
[Footnote 26: Henotheism in the Rig Veda (Drisler
Memorial).]
[Footnote 27: Ex. xv. 11; xviii. 11.]
[Footnote 28: RV. x. 114. 5; i. 164. 46; AV. iv. 16. 3.]
[Footnote 29: Bloomfield, JAOS. xv. 184.]
[Footnote 30: "Desire, the primal seed of mind," x. 129. 4.]
[Footnote 31: x. 72 (contains also the origin of the gods
from Aditi).]
[Footnote 32: x. 90, Here chand[=a][.m]si, carmina, is
probably the Atharvan.]
[Footnote 33: Rudras, Vasus, and [=A]dityas, the three
famous groups of gods. The Vasus are in Indra's train, the
'shining,' or, perhaps, 'good' gods.]
[Footnote 34: ii. 33. 13; x. 100. 5, etc. If the idea of manus=bonus be rejected, the Latin manes may be referred to m[=a]navas, the children of Manu.]
[Footnote 35: Or: "in an earthly place, in the atmosphere, or," etc.]
[Footnote 36: That is where the Fathers live. This is the only place where the Fathers are said to be náp[=a]t (descendants) of Vishnu, and here the sense may be "I have discovered Náp[=a]t (fire?)" But in i. 154. 5 Vishnu's worshippers rejoice in his home.]
[Footnote 37: Or: "form as thou wilt this body (of a corpse) to spirit life."]
[Footnote 38: x. 56. 4; otherwise, Grassmann.]
[Footnote 39: vi. 73. 9 refers to ancestors on earth, not in heaven.]
[Footnote 40: Compare Muir, OST. v. 285, where i. 125. 5 is compared with x. 107. 2: "The gift-giver becomes immortal; the gift-giver lives in the sky; he that gives horses lives in the sun." Compare Zimmer, Altind. Leben p. 409; Geiger, Ostiran. Cultur, p. 290.]
[Footnote 41: x. 88. 15, word for word: "two paths heard of the Fathers I, of the gods and of mortals." Cited as a mystery, Brih. [=A]ran. Up. vi. 2. 2.]
[Footnote 42: x. 16. 3: "if thou wilt go to the waters or to the plants," is added after this (in addressing the soul of the dead man). Plant-souls occur again in x. 58. 7.]
[Footnote 43: A V. XVIII.4.64; Muir, Av. loc. cit. p. 298. A passage of the Atharvan suggests that the dead may have been exposed as in Iran, but there is no trace of this in the Rig Veda (Zimmer, loc. cit. p. 402).]
[Footnote 44: Barth, Vedic Religions, p. 23; ib., the
narrow 'house of clay,' RV. VII. 89. 1.]
[Footnote 45: I. 24. 1; I. 125.6; VII. 56.24; cited by
Müller, Chips, I. p. 45.]
[Footnote 46: IX. 113. 7 ff.]
[Footnote 47: Avar[=o]dhana[.m] divás, 'enclosure of the
sky.']
[Footnote 48: Literally, 'where custom' (obtains), i.e.,
where the old usages still hold.]
[Footnote 49: The last words are to be understood as of sensual pleasures (Muir, loc. cit. p. 307, notes 462, 463).]
[Footnote 50: RV. II. 29. 6; VII. 104. 3, 17; IV. 5. 5; IX. 73. 8. Compare Mulr, loc. cit. pp. 311-312; and Zimmer, loc. cit. pp. 408, 418. Yama's 'hero-holding abode' is not a hell, as Ludwig thinks, but, as usual, the top vault of heaven.]
[Footnote 51: loc. cit. p. 123.]
[Footnote 52: X. 154. 2; 107. 2. Compare the mad ascetic, múni, VIII. 17. 14.]
[Footnote 53: X. 117. This is clearly seen in the seventh verse, where is praised the 'Brahman who talks,' i.e., can speak in behalf of the giver to the gods (compare verse three).]
[Footnote 54: X. 71. 6.]
[Footnote 55: Compare X. 145; 159. In X. 184 there is a prayer addressed to the goddesses Sin[=i]v[=a]l[=i] and Sarasvat[=i] (in conjunction with Vishnu, Tvashtar, the Creator, Praj[=a]pati, and the Horsemen) to make a woman fruitful.]
[Footnote 56: II. 15. 2; X. 6. 7 (Barth, loc. cit. p. 36). The sacrifice of animals, cattle, horses, goats, is customary; that of man, legendary; but it is implied in X. 18.8 (Hillebrandt, ZDMG. Xl p. 708), and is ritualized in the next period (below).]
[Footnote 57: Phallic worship may be alluded to in that of the 'tail-gods,' as Garbe thinks, but it is deprecated. One verse, however, which seems to have crept in by mistake, is apparently due to phallic influence (VIII. 1. 34), though such a cult was not openly acknowledged till Çiva-worship began, and is no part of Brahmanism.]
* * * * *
CHAPTER VII.
THE RELIGION OF THE ATHARVA VEDA.
The hymns of the Rig Veda inextricably confused; the deities of an earlier era confounded, and again merged together in a pantheism now complete; the introduction of strange gods; recognition of a hell of torture; instead of many divinities the One that represents all the gods, and nature as well; incantations for evil purposes and charms for a worthy purpose; formulae of malediction to be directed against 'those whom I hate and who hate me'; magical verses to obtain children, to prolong life, to dispel 'evil magic,' to guard against poison and other ills; the paralyzing extreme of ritualistic reverence indicated by the exaltation to godhead of the 'remnant' of sacrifice; hymns to snakes, to diseases, to sleep, time, and the stars; curses on the 'priest-plaguer'—such, in general outline, is the impression produced by a perusal of the Atharvan after that of the Rig Veda. How much of this is new?
The Rig Veda is not lacking in incantations, in witchcraft practices, in hymns to inanimate things, in indications of pantheism. But the general impression is produced, both by the tone of such hymns as these and by their place in the collection, that they are an addition to the original work. On the other hand, in reading the Atharvan hymns the collective impression is decidedly this, that what to the Rig is adventitious is essential to the Atharvan.
It has often been pointed out, however, that not only the practices involved, but the hymns themselves, in the Atharvan, may have existed long before they were collected, and that, while the Atharvan collection, as a whole, takes historical place after the Rig Veda, there yet may be comprised in the former much which is as old as any part of the latter work. It is also customary to assume that such hymns as betoken a lower worship (incantations, magical formulae, etc.) were omitted purposely from the Rig Veda to be collected in the Atharvan. That which eventually can neither be proved nor disproved is, perhaps, best left undiscussed, and it is vain to seek scientific proof where only historic probabilities are obtainable. Yet, if a closer approach to truth be attractive, even a greater probability will be a gain, and it becomes worth while to consider the problem a little with only this hope in view.
Those portions of the Rig Veda which seem to be Atharvan-like are, in general, to be found in the later books (or places) of the collection. But it would be presumptuous to conclude that a work, although almost entirely given up to what in the Rig Veda appears to be late, should itself be late in origin. By analogy, in a nature-religion such as was that of India, the practice of demonology, witchcraft, etc., must have been an early factor. But, while this is true, it is clearly impossible to postulate therefrom that the hymns recording all this array of cursing, deviltry, and witchcraft are themselves early. The further forward one advances into the labyrinth of Hindu religions the more superstitions, the more devils, demons, magic, witchcraft, and uncanny things generally, does he find. Hence, while any one superstitious practice may be antique, there is small probability for assuming a contemporaneous origin of the hymns of the two collections. The many verses cited, apparently pell-mell, from the Rig Veda, might, it is true, revert to a version older than that in which they are found in the Rig Veda, but there is nothing to show that they were not taken from the Rig Veda, and re-dressed in a form that rendered them in many cases more intelligible; so that often what is respectfully spoken of as a 'better varied reading' of the Atharvan may be better, as we have said in the introductory chapter, only in lucidity; and the lucidity be due to tampering with a text old and unintelligible. Classical examples abound in illustrations.
Nevertheless, although an antiquity equal to that of the whole Rig Veda can by no means be claimed for the Atharvan collection (which, at least in its tone, belongs to the Brahmanic period), yet is the mass represented by the latter, if not contemporaneous, at any rate so venerable, that it safely may be assigned to a period as old as that in which were composed the later hymns of the Rik itself. But in distinction from the hymns themselves the weird religion they represent is doubtless as old, if not older, than that of the Rig Veda. For, while the Rig Vedic _soma-_cult is Indo-Iranian, the original Atharvan (fire) cult is even more primitive, and the basis of the work, from this point of view, may have preceded the composition of Rik hymns. This Atharvan religion—if it may be called so—is, therefore, of exceeding importance. It opens wide the door which the Rik puts ajar, and shows a world of religious and mystical ideas which without it could scarcely have been suspected. Here magic eclipses Soma and reigns supreme. The wizard is greater than the gods; his herbs and amulets are sovereign remedies. Religion is seen on its lowest side. It is true that there is 'bad magic' and 'good magic' (the existence of the former is substantiated by the maledictions against it), but what has been received into the collection is apparently the best. To heal the sick and procure desirable things is the object of most of the charms and incantations—but some of the desirable things are disease and death of one's foes. On the higher side of religion, from a metaphysical point of view, the Atharvan is pantheistic. It knows also the importance of the 'breaths,'[1] the vital forces; it puts side by side the different gods and says that each 'is lord.' It does not lack philosophical speculation which, although most of it is puerile, sometimes raises questions of wider scope, as when the sage inquires who made the body with its wonderful parts—implying, but not stating the argument, from design, in its oldest form.[2]
Of magical verses there are many, but the content is seldom more than "do thou, O plant, preserve from harm," etc. Harmless enough, if somewhat weak, are also many other hymns calculated to procure blessings:
Blessings blow to us the wind,
Blessings glow to us the sun,
Blessings be to us the day,
Blest to us the night appear,
Blest to us the dawn shall shine,
is a fair specimen of this innocuous sort of verse.[3] Another example may be seen in this hymn to a king: "Firm is the sky; firm is the earth; firm, all creation; firm, these hills; firm the king of the people (shall be)," etc.[4] In another hymn there is an incantation to release from possible ill coming from a foe and from inherited ill or sin.[5] A free spirit of doubt and atheism, already foreshadowed in the Rig Veda, is implied in the prayer that the god will be merciful to the cattle of that man "whose creed is 'Gods exist.'"[6] Serpent-worship is not only known, but prevalent.[7] The old gods still hold, as always, their nominal places, albeit the system is pantheistic, so that Varuna is god of waters; and Mitra with Varuna, gods of rain.[8] As a starting-point of philosophy the dictum of the Rig Veda is repeated: 'Desire is the seed of mind,' and 'love, i.e., desire, was born first.' Here Aditi is defined anew as the one in whose lap is the wide atmosphere— she is parent and child, gods and men, all in all—'may she extend to us a triple shelter.' As an example of curse against curse may be compared II. 7:
The sin-hated, god-born plant, that frees from the curse as waters (wash out) the spot, has washed away all curses, the curse of my rival and of my sister; (that) which the Brahman in anger cursed, all this lies under my feet … With this plant protect this (wife), protect my child, protect our property … May the curse return to the curser … We smite even the ribs of the foe with the evil (mantra) eye.
A love-charm in the same book (II. 30) will remind the classical student of Theocritus' second idyl: 'As the wind twirls around grass upon the ground, so I twirl thy mind about, that thou mayst become loving, that thou mayst not depart from me,' etc. In the following verses the Horsemen gods are invoked to unite the lovers. Characteristic among bucolic passages is the cow-song in II. 26, the whole intent of which is to ensure a safe return to the cows on their wanderings: 'Hither may they come, the cattle that have wandered far away,' etc.
The view that there are different conditions of Manes is clearly taught in XVIII. 2. 48-49, where it is said that there are three heavens, in the highest of which reside the Manes; while a distinction is made at the same time between 'fathers' and 'grandfathers,' the fathers' fathers, 'who have entered air, who inhabit earth and heaven.' Here appears nascent the doctrine of 'elevating the Fathers,' which is expressly taught in the next era. The performance of rites in honor of the Manes causes them to ascend from a low state to a higher one. In fact, if the offerings are not given at all, the spirits do not go to heaven. In general the older generations of Manes go up highest and are happiest. The personal offering is only to the immediate fathers.
If, as was shown in the introductory chapter, the Atharvan represents a geographical advance on the part of the Vedic Aryans, this fact cannot be ignored in estimating the primitiveness of the collection. Geographical advance, acquaintance with other flora and fauna than those of the Rig Veda, means—although the argument of silence must not be exaggerated—a temporal advance also. And not less significant are the points of view to which one is led in the useful little work of Scherman on the philosophical hymns of the Atharvan. Scherman wishes to show the connection between the Upanishads and Vedas. But the bearing of his collection is toward a closer union of the two bodies of works, and especially of the Atharvan, not to the greater gain in age of the Upanishads so much as to the depreciation in venerableness of the former. If the Atharvan has much more in common with the Br[=a]hmanas and Upanishads than has the Rig Veda, it is because the Atharvan stands, in many respects, midway in time between the era of Vedic hymnology and the thought of the philosophical period. The terminology is that of the Br[=a]hmanas, rather than that of the Rig Veda. The latter knows the great person; the Atharvan, and the former know the original great person, i.e.., the tausa movens under the causa efficiens, etc. In the Atharvan appears first the worship of Time, Love, 'Support' (Skambha), and the 'highest brahma. The cult of the holy cow is fully recognized (XII. 4 and 5). The late ritualistic terms, as well as linguistic evidence, confirm the fact indicated by the geographical advance. The country is known from western Balkh to eastern Beh[=a]r, the latter familiarly.[9] In a word, one may conclude that on its higher side the Atharvan is later than the Rig Veda, while on its lower side of demonology one may recognize the religion of the lower classes as compared with that of the two upper classes—for the latter the Rig Veda, for the superstitious people at large the Atharvan, a collection of which the origin agrees with its application. For, if it at first was devoted to the unholy side of fire-cult, and if the fire-cult is older than the soma-cult, then this is the cult that one would expect to see most affected by the conservative vulgar, who in India hold fast to what the cultured have long dropped as superstition, or, at least, pretended to drop; though the house-ritual keeps some magic in its fire-cult.
In that case, it may be asked, why not begin the history of Hindu religion with the Atharvan, rather than with the Rig Veda? Because the Atharvan, as a whole, in its language, social conditions, geography, 'remnant' worship, etc., shows that this literary collection is posterior to the Rik collection. As to individual hymns, especially those imbued with the tone of fetishism and witchcraft, any one of them, either in its present or original form, may outrank the whole Rik in antiquity, as do its superstitions the religion of the Rik—if it is right to make a distinction between superstition and religion, meaning by the former a lower, and by the latter a more elevated form of belief in the supernatural.
The difference between the Rik-worshipper and Atharvan-worshipper is somewhat like that which existed at a later age between the philosophical Çivaite and Durg[=a]ite. The former revered Çiva, but did not deny the power of a host of lesser mights, whom he was ashamed to worship too much; the latter granted the all-god-head of Çiva, but paid attention almost exclusively to some demoniac divinity. Superstition, perhaps, always precedes theology; but as surely does superstition outlive any one form of its protean rival. And the simple reason is that a theology is the real belief of few, and varies with their changing intellectual point of view; while superstition is the belief unacknowledged of the few and acknowledged of the many, nor does it materially change from age to age. The rites employed among the clam-diggers on the New York coast, the witch-charms they use, the incantations, cutting of flesh, fire-oblations, meaningless formulae, united with sacrosanct expressions of the church, are all on a par with the religion of the lower classes as depicted in Theocritus and the Atharvan. If these mummeries and this hocus-pocus were collected into a volume, and set out with elegant extracts from the Bible, there would be a nineteenth century Atharva Veda. What are the necessary equipment of a Long Island witch? First, "a good hot fire," and then formulae such as this:[10]
"If a man is attacked by wicked people and how to banish them:
"Bedgoblin and all ye evil spirits, I, N.N., forbid you my bedstead, my couch; I, N.N., forbid you in the name of God my house and home; I forbid you in the name of the Holy Trinity my blood and flesh, my body and soul; I forbid you all the nail-holes in my house and home, till you have travelled over every hill, waded through every water, have counted all the leaves of every tree, and counted all the stars in the sky, until the day arrives when the mother of God shall bare her second son."
If this formula be repeated three times, with the baptismal name of the person, it will succeed!
"To make one's self invisible:
"Obtain the ear of a black cat, boil it in the milk of a black cow, wear it on the thumb, and no one will see you."
This is the Atharvan, or fire-and witch-craft of to-day—not differing much from the ancient. It is the unchanging foundation of the many lofty buildings of faith that are erected, removed, and rebuilt upon it—the belief in the supernatural at its lowest, a belief which, in its higher stages, is always level with the general intellect of those that abide in it.
The latest book of the Atharvan is especially for the warrior-caste, but the mass of it is for the folk at large. It was long before it was recognized as a legitimate Veda. It never stands, in the older period of Brahmanism, on a par with the S[=a]man and Rik. In the epic period good and bad magic are carefully differentiated, and even to-day the Atharvan is repudiated by southern Br[=a]hmans. But there is no doubt that sub rosa, the silliest practices inculcated and formulated in the Atharvan were the stronghold of a certain class of priests, or that such priests were feared and employed by the laity, openly by the low classes, secretly by the intelligent.
In respect of the name the magical cult was referred, historically with justice, to the fire-priests, Atharvan and Angiras, though little application to fire, other than in soma-worship, is apparent. Yet was this undoubtedly the source of the cult (the fire-cult is still distinctly associated with the Atharva Veda in the epic), and the name is due neither to accident nor to a desire to invoke the names of great seers, as will Weber.[11] The other name of Brahmaveda may have connection with the 'false science of Brihaspati,' alluded to in a Upanishad.[12] This seer is not over-orthodox, and later he is the patron of the unorthodox C[=a]rv[=a]kas. It was seen above that the god Brihaspati is also a novelty not altogether relished by the Vedic Aryans.
From an Aryan point of view how much weight is to be placed on comparisons of the formulae in the Atharvan of India with those of other Aryan nations? Kuhn has compared[13] an old German magic formula of healing with one in the Atharvan, and because each says 'limb to limb' he thinks that they are of the same origin, particularly since the formula is found in Russian. The comparison is interesting, but it is far from convincing. Such formulae spring up independently all over the earth.
Finally, it is to be observed that in this Veda first occurs the implication of the story of the flood (xix. 39. 8), and the saving of Father Manu, who, however, is known by this title in the Rik. The supposition that the story of the flood is derived from Babylon, seems, therefore, to be an unnecessary (although a permissible) hypothesis, as the tale is old enough in India to warrant a belief in its indigenous origin.[14]
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: XV. 15.]
[Footnote 2: X. 2.]
[Footnote 3: VII. 69. Compare RV. VII. 35, and the epic (below).]
[Footnote 4: X. 173.]
[Footnote 5: V. 30.]
[Footnote 6: XI. 2. 28.]
[Footnote 7: XI. 9; VIII. 6 and 7, with tree-worship.]
[Footnote 8: V. 24. 4-5. On 'the one god' compare X. 8. 28; XIII. 4. 15. Indra as S[=u]rya, in VII. 11; cf. xiii. 4; XVII. 1. 24. Pantheism in X. 7. 14. 25. Of charms, compare ii. 9, to restore life; III. 6, a curse against 'whom I hate'; III. 23, to obtain offspring. On the stars and night, see hymn at XIX. 8 and 47. In V. 13, a guard against poison; ib. a hymn to a drum; ib. 31, a charm to dispel evil magic; VI. 133, magic to produce long life; V. 23, against worms, etc., etc. Aditi, VII. 6. 1-4 (partly Rik).]
[Footnote 9: Compare Muir, OST. II. 447 ff.]
[Footnote 10: This old charm is still used among the clam-diggers of Canarsie, N.Y.]
[Footnote 11: Ind. Lit^2 p. 164.]
[Footnote 12: M[=a]it. Up.. vii. 9. He is 'the gods'
Brahm[=a]' (Rik.)]
[Footnote 13: Indische und germanische Segenssprüche; KZ.
xiii. 49.]
[Footnote 14: One long hymn, xii. 1, of the Atharvan is to earth and fire (19-20). In the Rik, átharvan is fire-priest and bringer of fire from heaven; while once the word may mean fire itself (viii. 9, 7). The name Brahmaveda is perhaps best referred to brahma as fire (whence 'fervor,' 'prayer,' and again 'energy,' 'force'). In distinction from the great soma-sacrifices, the fire-cult always remains the chief thing in the domestic ritual. The present Atharvan formulae have for the most part no visible application to fire, but the name still shows the original connection.]
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