Chapter 14

Then we ask at once: "Were then these Heaven and Earth gods?" But gods in what sense? In our sense of God? Why, in our sense, God is altogether incapable of a plural. Then in the Greek sense of the word? No, certainly not; for what the Greeks called gods was the result of an intellectual growth totally independent of the Veda or of India. We must never forget that what we call gods in ancient mythologies are not substantial, living, individual beings, of whom we can predicate this or that. D e v a, which we translate by god, is nothing but an adjective, expressive of a quality shared by heaven and earth, by the sun and the stars and the dawn and the sea, namely _brightness_; and the idea of god, at that early time, contains neither more nor less than what is shared in common by all these bright beings. That is to say, the idea of god is not an idea ready-made, which could be applied in its abstract purity to heaven and earth and other such like beings; but it is an idea, growing out of the concepts of heaven and earth and of the other bright beings, slowly separating itself from them, but never containing more than what was contained, though confusedly, in the objects to which it was successively applied.

Nor must it be supposed that heaven and earth, having once been raised to the rank of undecaying or immortal beings, of divine parents, of guardians of the laws, were thus permanently settled in the religious consciousness of the people. Far from it. When the ideas of other gods, and of more active and more distinctly personal gods had been elaborated, the Vedic _Ri_shis asked without hesitation: Who then has made heaven and earth? not exactly Heaven and Earth, as conceived before, but heaven and earth as seen every day, as a part of what began to be called Nature or the Universe.

Thus one poet says:[178]

"He was indeed among the gods the cleverest workman who produced the two brilliant ones (heaven and earth), that gladden all things; he who measured out the two bright ones (heaven and earth) by his wisdom, and established them on everlasting supports."

And again:[179] "He was a good workman who produced heaven and earth; the wise, who by his might brought together these two (heaven and earth), the wide, the deep, the well-fashioned in the bottomless space."

Very soon this great work of making heaven and earth was ascribed, like other mighty works, to the mightiest of their gods, to Indra. At first we read that Indra, originally only a kind of _Jupiter pluvius_, or god of rain, stretched out heaven and earth, like a hide;[180] that he held them in his hand,[181] that he upholds heaven and earth,[182] and that he grants heaven and earth to his worshippers.[183] But very soon Indra is praised for having made Heaven and Earth;[184] and then, when the poet remembers that Heaven and Earth had been praised elsewhere as the parents of the gods, and more especially as the parents of Indra, he does not hesitate for a moment, but says:[185] "What poets living before us have reached the end of all thy greatness? for thou hast indeed begotten thy father and thy mother together[186] from thy own body!"

That is a strong measure, and a god who once could do that, was no doubt capable of anything afterward. The same idea, namely that Indra is greater than heaven and earth, is expressed in a less outrageous way by another poet, who says[187] that Indra is greater than heaven and earth, and that both together are only a half of Indra. Or again:[188] "The divine Dyaus bowed before Indra, before Indra the great Earth bowed with her wide spaces." "At the birth of thy splendor Dyaus trembled, the Earth trembled for fear of thy anger."[189]

Thus, from one point of view, Heaven and Earth were the greatest gods, they were the parents of everything, and therefore of the gods also, such as Indra and others.

But, from another point of view, every god that was considered as supreme at one time or other, must necessarily have made heaven and earth, must at all events be greater than heaven and earth, and thus the child became greater than the father, ay, became the father of his father. Indra was not the only god that created heaven and earth. In one hymn[190] that creation is ascribed to Soma and Pushan, by no means very prominent characters; in another[191] to Hira_n_yagarbha (the golden germ); in another again to a god who is simply called Dhat_ri_, the Creator,[192] or Vi_s_vakarman,[193] the maker of all things. Other gods, such as Mitra and Savit_ri_, names of the sun, are praised for upholding Heaven and Earth, and the same task is sometimes performed by the old god Varu_n_a[194] also.

What I wish you to observe in all this is the perfect freedom with which these so-called gods or Devas are handled, and particularly the ease and naturalness with which now the one, now the other emerges as supreme out of this chaotic theogony. This is the peculiar character of the ancient Vedic religion, totally different both from the Polytheism and from the Monotheism as we see it in the Greek and the Jewish religions; and if the Veda had taught us nothing else but this _henotheistic_ phase, which must everywhere have preceded the more highly-organized phase of Polytheism which we see in Greece, in Rome, and elsewhere, the study of the Veda would not have been in vain.

It may be quite true that the poetry of the Veda is neither beautiful, in our sense of the word, nor very profound; but it is instructive. When we see those two giant spectres of Heaven and Earth on the background of the Vedic religion, exerting their influence for a time, and then vanishing before the light of younger and more active gods, we learn a lesson which it is well to learn, and which we can hardly learn anywhere else--the lesson _how gods were made and unmade_--how the Beyond or the Infinite was named by different names in order to bring it near to the mind of man, to make it for a time comprehensible, until, when name after name had proved of no avail, a nameless God was felt to answer best the restless cravings of the human heart.

I shall next translate to you the hymn to which I referred before as addressed to the Rivers. If the Rivers are to be called deities at all, they belong to the class of terrestrial deities. But the reason why I single out this hymn is not so much because it throws new light on the theogonic process, but because it may help to impart some reality to the vague conceptions which we form to ourselves of the ancient Vedic poets and their surroundings. The rivers invoked are, as we shall see, the real rivers of the Punjab, and the poem shows a much wider geographical horizon than we should expect from a mere village-bard.[195]

1. "Let the poet declare, O Waters, your exceeding greatness, here in the seat of Vivasvat.[196] By seven and seven they have come forth in three courses, but the Sindhu (the Indus) exceeds all the other wandering rivers by her strength.

2. "Varu_n_a dug out paths for thee to walk on, when thou rannest to the race.[197] Thou proceedest on a precipitous ridge of the earth, when thou art lord in the van of all the moving streams.

3. "The sound rises up to heaven above the earth; she stirs up with splendor her endless power.[198] As from a cloud, the showers thunder forth, when the Sindhu comes, roaring like a bull.

4. "To thee, O Sindhu, they (the other rivers) come as lowing mother-cows (run) to their young with their milk.[199] Like a king in battle thou leadest the two wings, when thou reachest the front of these down-rushing rivers.

5. "Accept, O Ganga (Ganges), Yamuna (Jumna), Sarasvati (Sursuti), _S_utudri (Sutlej), Parush_n_i (Iravati, Ravi), my praise![200] With the Asikni (Akesines) listen, O Marudv_ri_dha,[201] and with the Vitasta (Hydaspes, Behat); O Ar_g_ikiya,[202] listen with the Sushoma.[203]

6. "First thou goest united with the T_ri_sh_t_ama on thy journey, with the Susartu, the Rasa (Ra_m_ha, Araxes?[204]), and the _S_veti--O Sindhu, with the Kubha (Kophen, Cabul river) to the Gomati (Gomal), with the Mehatnu to the Krumu (Kurum)--with whom thou proceedest together.

7. "Sparkling, bright, with mighty splendor she carries the waters across the plains--the unconquered Sindhu, the quickest of the quick, like a beautiful mare--a sight to see.

8. "Rich in horses, in chariots, in garments, in gold, in booty,[205] in wool,[206] and in straw,[207] the Sindhu, handsome and young, clothes herself in sweet flowers.[208]

9. "The Sindhu has yoked her easy chariot with horses; may she conquer prizes for us in the race. The greatness of her chariot is praised as truly great--that chariot which is irresistible, which has its own glory, and abundant strength."[209]

This hymn does not sound perhaps very poetical, in our sense of the word; yet if you will try to realize the thoughts of the poet who composed it, you will perceive that it is not without some bold and powerful conceptions.

Take the modern peasants, living in their villages by the side of the Thames, and you must admit that he would be a remarkable man who could bring himself to look on the Thames as a kind of a general, riding at the head of many English rivers, and leading them on to a race or a battle. Yet it is easier to travel in England, and to gain a commanding view of the river-system of the country, than it was three thousand years ago to travel over India, even over that part of India which the poet of our hymn commands. He takes in at one swoop three great river-systems, or, as he calls them, three great armies of rivers--those flowing from the north-west into the Indus, those joining it from the north-east, and, in the distance, the Ganges and the Jumnah with their tributaries. Look on the map and you will see how well these three armies are determined; but our poet had no map--he had nothing but high mountains and sharp eyes to carry out his trigonometrical survey. Now I call a man, who for the first time could _see_ those three marching armies of rivers, a poet.

The next thing that strikes one in that hymn--if hymn we must call it--is the fact that all these rivers, large and small, have their own proper names. That shows a considerable advance in civilized life, and it proves no small degree of coherence, or what the French call _solidarity_, between the tribes who had taken possession of Northern India. Most settlers call the river on whose banks they settle "_the river_." Of course there are many names for river. It may be called the runner,[210] the fertilizer, the roarer--or, with a little poetical metaphor, the arrow, the horse, the cow, the father, the mother, the watchman, the child of the mountains. Many rivers had many names in different parts of their course, and it was only when communication between different settlements became more frequent, and a fixed terminology was felt to be a matter of necessity, that the rivers of a country were properly baptized and registered. All this had been gone through in India before our hymn became possible.

And now we have to consider another, to my mind most startling fact. We here have a number of names of the rivers of India, as they were known to one single poet, say about 1000 B.C. We then hear nothing of India till we come to the days of Alexander, and when we look at the names of the Indian rivers, represented as well as they could be by Alexander's companions, mere strangers in India, and by means of a strange language and a strange alphabet, we recognize, without much difficulty, nearly all of the old Vedic names.

In this respect the names of rivers have a great advantage over the names of towns in India. What we now call _Dilli_ or _Delhi_[211] was in ancient times called Indraprastha, in later times _Shahjahanabad_. _Oude_ is Ayodhya, but the old name of Saketa is forgotten. The town of Pa_t_aliputra, known to the Greeks as _Palimbothra_, is now called _Patna_.[212]

Now I can assure you this persistency of the Vedic river-names was to my mind something so startling that I often said to myself, This cannot be--there must be something wrong here. I do not wonder so much at the names of the _Indus_ and the _Ganges_ being the same. The Indus was known to early traders, whether by sea or by land. Skylax sailed from the country of the Paktys, _i.e._ the Pushtus, as the Afghans still call themselves, down to the mouth of the Indus. That was under Darius Hystaspes (521-486). Even before that time India and the Indians were known by their name, which was derived from _Sindhu_, the name of their frontier river. The neighboring tribes who spoke Iranic languages all pronounced, like the Persian, the _s_ as an _h_.[213] Thus Sindhu became Hindhu (Hidhu), and, as h's were dropped even at that early time, Hindhu became Indu. Thus the river was called _Indos_, the people _Indoi_ by the Greeks, who first heard of India from the Persians.

_Sindhu_ probably meant originally the divider, keeper, and defender, from sidh, to keep off. It was a masculine, before it became a feminine. No more telling name could have been given to a broad river, which guarded peaceful settlers both against the inroads of hostile tribes and the attacks of wild animals. A common name for the ancient settlements of the Aryans in India was "the Seven Rivers," "Sapta Sindhava_h_." But though sindhu was used as an appellative noun for river in general (cf. Rig-Veda VI. 19, 5, samudre na sindhava_h_ yadamana_h_, "like rivers longing for the sea"), it remained throughout the whole history of India the name of its powerful guardian river, the Indus.

In some passages of the Rig-Veda it has been pointed out that sindhu might better be translated by "sea," a change of meaning, if so it can be called, fully explained by the geographical conditions of the country. There are places where people could swim across the Indus, there are others where no eye could tell whether the boundless expanse of water should be called river or sea. The two run into each other, as every sailor knows, and naturally the meaning of sindhu, river, runs into the meaning of sindhu, sea.

But besides the two great rivers, the Indus and the Ganges--in Sanskrit the Ganga, literally the Go-go--we have the smaller rivers, and many of their names also agree with the names preserved to us by the companions of Alexander.[214]

The Yamuna, the Jumna, was known to Ptolemy as [Greek: Diamouna],[215] to Pliny as Jomanes, to Arrian, somewhat corrupted, as Jobares.[216]

The _S_utudri, or, as it was afterward called, _S_atadru, meaning "running in a hundred streams," was known to Ptolemy as [Greek: Zadardes] or [Greek: Zarados]; Pliny called it Sydrus; and Megasthenes, too, was probably acquainted with it as [Greek: Zadardes]. In the Veda[217] it formed with the Vipa_s_ the frontier of the Punjab, and we hear of fierce battles fought at that time, it may be on the same spot where in 1846 the battle of the Sutledge was fought by Sir Hugh Gough and Sir Henry Hardinge. It was probably on the Vipa_s_ (later Vipa_s_a), a north-western tributary of the Sutledge, that Alexander's army turned back. The river was then called Hyphasis; Pliny calls it Hypasis,[218] a very fair approximation to the Vedic Vipa_s_, which means "unfettered." Its modern name is Bias or Bejah.

The next river on the west is the Vedic Parush_n_i, better known as Iravati,[219] which Strabo calls Hyarotis, while Arrian gives it a more Greek appearance by calling it Hydraotes. It is the modern Rawi. It was this river which the Ten Kings when attacking the T_ri_tsus under Sudas tried to cross from the west by cutting off its water. But their stratagem failed, and they perished in the river (Rig-Veda VII. 18, 8-9).

We then come to the Asikni, which means "black." That river had another name also, _K_andrabhaga, which means "streak of the moon." The Greeks, however, pronounced that [Greek: Sandarophagos], and this had the unlucky meaning of "the devourer of Alexander." Hesychius tells us that in order to avert the bad omen Alexander changed the name of that river into [Greek: Akesines], which would mean "the Healer;" but he does not tell, what the Veda tells us, that this name [Greek: Akesines] was a Greek adaptation of another name of the same river, namely Asikni, which had evidently supplied to Alexander the idea of calling the Asikni [Greek: Akesines]. It is the modern Chinab.

Next to the Akesines we have the Vedic Vitasta, the last of the rivers of the Punjab, changed in Greek into Hydaspes. It was to this river that Alexander retired, before sending his fleet down the Indus and leading his army back to Babylon. It is the modern Behat or Jilam.

I could identify still more of these Vedic rivers, such as, for instance, the Kubha, the Greek Cophen, the modern Kabul river;[220] but the names which I have traced from the Veda to Alexander, and in many cases from Alexander again to our own time, seem to me sufficient to impress upon us the real and historical character of the Veda. Suppose the Veda were a forgery--suppose at least that it had been put together after the time of Alexander--how could we explain these names? They are names that have mostly a meaning in Sanskrit, they are names corresponding very closely to their Greek corruptions, as pronounced and written down by people who did not know Sanskrit. How is a forgery possible here?

I selected this hymn for two reasons. First, because it shows us the widest geographical horizon of the Vedic poets, confined by the snowy mountains in the north, the Indus and the range of the Suleiman mountains in the west, the Indus or the seas in the south, and the valley of the Jumna and Ganges in the east. Beyond that, the world, though open, was unknown to the Vedic poets. Secondly, because the same hymn gives us also a kind of historical background to the Vedic age. These rivers, as we may see them to-day, as they were seen by Alexander and his Macedonians, were seen also by the Vedic poets. Here we have an historical continuity--almost living witnesses, to tell us that the people whose songs have been so strangely, ay, you may almost say, so miraculously preserved to us, were real people, lairds with their clans, priests, or rather, servants of their gods, shepherds with their flocks, dotted about on the hills and valleys, with inclosures or palisades here and there, with a few strongholds, too, in case of need--living their short life on earth, as at that time life might be lived by men, without much pushing and crowding and trampling on each other--spring, summer, and winter leading them on from year to year, and the sun in his rising and setting lifting up their thoughts from their meadows and groves which they loved, to a world in the East, from which they had come, or to a world in the West, to which they were gladly hastening on. They had what I call religion, though it was very simple, and hardly reduced as yet to the form of a creed. "There is a Beyond," that was all they felt and knew, though they tried, as well as they could, to give names to that Beyond, and thus to change religion into _a_ religion. They had not as yet a name for God--certainly not in our sense of the word--or even a general name for the gods; but they invented name after name to enable them to grasp and comprehend by some outward and visible tokens powers whose presence they felt in nature, though their true and full essence was to them, as it is to us, invisible and incomprehensible.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 150: Wilson, Lectures, p. 9.]

[Footnote 151: As it has been doubted, and even denied, that the publication of the Rig-Veda and its native commentary has had some important bearing on the resuscitation of the religious life of India, I feel bound to give at least one from the many testimonials which I have received from India. It comes from the Adi Brahma Samaj, founded by Ram Mohun Roy, and now represented by its three branches, the Adi Brahma Samaj, the Brahma Samaj of India, and the Sadharano Brahma Samaj. "The Committee of the Adi Brahma Samaj beg to offer you their hearty congratulations on the completion of the gigantic task which has occupied you for the last quarter of a century. By publishing the Rig-Veda at a time when Vedic learning has by some sad fatality become almost extinct in the land of its birth, you have conferred a boon upon us Hindus, for which we cannot but be eternally grateful."]

[Footnote 152: Rig-Veda X. 114, 5.]

[Footnote 153: Rig-Veda X. 121.]

[Footnote 154: Muir, iv. 9.]

[Footnote 155: Rig-Veda I. 139, 11.]

[Footnote 156: Rig-Veda III. 6, 9.]

[Footnote 157: The following names of Devapatnis or wives of the gods are given in the Vaitana Sutra XV. 3 (ed. Garbe): P_ri_thivi, the wife of Agni, Va_k_ of Vata, Sena of Indra, Dhena of B_ri_haspati, Pathya of Pushan, Gayatri of Vasu, Trish_t_ubh of Rudra, _G_agati of Aditya, Anush_t_ubh of Mitra, Vira_g_ of Varu_n_a, Pankti of Vish_n_u, Diksha of Soma.]

[Footnote 158: Rig-Veda III. 9, 9.]

[Footnote 159: Grimm showed that Thorr is sometimes the supreme god, while at other times he is the son of Odinn. This, as Professor Zimmer truly remarks, need not be regarded as the result of a revolution, or even of gradual decay, as in the case of Dyaus and Tyr, but simply as inherent in the character of a nascent polytheism. See Zeitschrift fuer D. A., vol. xii. p. 174.]

[Footnote 160: "Among not yet civilized races prayers are addressed to a god with a special object, and to that god who is supposed to be most powerful in a special domain. He becomes for the moment the highest god to whom all others must give place. He may be invoked as the highest and the only god, without any slight being intended for the other gods."--Zimmer, l. c. p. 175.]

[Footnote 161: "Es handelt sich hier nicht um amerikanische oder afrikanische Zersplitterung, sondern eine ueberraschende Gleichartigkeit dehnt sich durch die Weite und Breite des Stillen Oceans, und wenn wir Oceanien in der vollen Auffassung nehmen mit Einschluss Mikro-und Mela-nesiens (bis Malaya), selbst weiter. Es laesst sich sagen, dass ein einheitlicher Gedankenbau, in etwa 120 Laengen und 70 Breitegraden, ein Viertel unsers Erdglobus ueberwoelbt."--Bastian, Die Heilige Sage der Polynesier, p. 57.]

[Footnote 162: Henry S. King & Co., London, 1876.]

[Footnote 163: P. 58.]

[Footnote 164: There is a second version of the story even in the small island of Mangaia; see "Myths and Songs," p. 71.]

[Footnote 165: See before, p. 158.]

[Footnote 166: This explanation is considered altogether inadequate by many scholars. It is, of course, not altogether a question of learning, but also one of judgment.--AM. PUBS.]

[Footnote 167: "The Sacred Books of the East," vol. i. p. 249: "The first half is the earth, the second half the heaven, their uniting the rain, the uniter Par_g_anya." And so it is when it (Par_g_anya) rains thus strongly--without ceasing, day and night together--then they say also, "Heaven and earth have come together."--From the Aitareya-Ara_n_yaka, III. 2, 2.--A. W.]

[Footnote 168: Bastian, Heilige Sage der Polynesier, p. 36.]

[Footnote 169: Bergaigne, "La Religion Vedique," p. 240.]

[Footnote 170: Ait. Br. IV. 27; Muir, iv. p. 23.]

[Footnote 171: See Muir, iv. p. 24.]

[Footnote 172: Homer, Hymn xxx. 17.]

[Footnote 173: [Greek: Chaire theon meter, haloch Onranon asteroentos.]]

[Footnote 174: Euripides, Chrysippus, fragm. 6 (edit. Didot, p. 824):

[Greek: Gaia megiste kai Dios aither, o men anthropon kai theon genetor, he d' ugrobolous stagonas notious paradexamene tiktei thnatous, tiktei de Boran, phula te theron, hothen onk hadikos meter panton nenomistai.]]

[Footnote 175: Dionysius Halic., vol. v. p. 355; Muir, v. p. 27.]

[Footnote 176: Rig-Veda I. 22, 15.]