•v\sf*^^i .i ^^« ^^^^%^al ^,^^ PRINCETON, N. J. '% 5/^^^., Division .... .13- U». .^. i?.P Section .*. k^.«!^.^ .VV. . . . Number TRUBNER'8 ORIENTAL SERIES. *' A knowledge of tlie commonplace, at least, of Oriental literature, philo- sophy, and religion is as necessary to the general reader of the present day as an acquaintance with tlie Latin and Greek classics was a generation or so ago. 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TR UBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. THE FOLLOWING WORKS HAVE ALREADY APPEARED :— Second Edition, post 8vo, cloth, j^p. xvi.— 428, pi'ice i6s. ESSAYS ON THE SACRED LANGUAGE, WRITINGS, AND RELIGION OF THE PARSIS. By martin HAUG, Ph.D., Late of the Universities of Tiibingen, Gottingen, and Bonn ; Superintendent of Sanskrit Studies, and Professor of Sanskrit in the Poona College. Edited by Dr. E. W. WEST. I. History of the Researches into the Sacred Writings and Religion of the Parsis, from the Earliest Times down to the Present. II, Languages of the Parsi Scriptures. III. The Zend-Avesta, or the Scrij^ture of the Parsis. IV. The Zoroastrian Religion, as to its Origin and Development. " 'Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis,' by the tote Dr. :Martin Haug, edited by Dr. E. W. West. 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The Dhammapada, as hitherto known hy the Pali Text Edition, as edited by FausboU, by Max Mliller's English, and Albrecht Weber's German translations, consists only of twenty-six chapters or sections, whilst the Chmese version, or rather recension, as now translated by Mr. Real coi sists of thirty-nine sections. The students of Pali who possess Fausboll con- text, or either of the above-named translations, will therefore needs Avant Mr. Beal's English rendering of the Chinese version ; the thirteen al)ove- named additional sections not being accessible to them in any other form - for, even if they understand Chinese, the Chinese original would be un- obtainable by them. ;' Mr. Beal's rendering of the Chinese translation is a most valuable aid to the critical stiidy of the work. It contains authentic texts gathered from ancient Buddha. Their great interest, however, consists in the light which they throw ifpon everyday life in India at the remote period at which they were WTitten, and upon the method of teaching adopted by the founder of the religion. The method employed was principally parable, and the simplicity of the tales and the excellence ?h *^*^."'°^=^^,^ inculcated, as well as the strange hold which they have retained upon Ml. lieal, by making it accessible in an English dress, has added to the great ser- vices he has already rendered to the comparative study of religious Mstovy. "-Acodany. +.. J i"i '''•^. exhibiting the doctrine of the Buddhists in its purest, least adul- terated f<>n.i. It brings the modern reader face to face with that simple creed and rule tZl y\'^^'''^'' "^-n- '^' ^'Y^T'^^*^*^ ^""'l^ "f myriads, and which is now nomiually YlfZ . ^^/^^ md^'"?i^' '^^'^. ^'*''^° overlaid its austere simplicity with innumerabli S. o fi ^f ^'''"P". ^^« ^J-'^xims, perverted its teaching, and so inverted its leading TRUBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. Post 8vo, cloth, pp. xxiii. — 360, price i8s. THE HISTORY OF INDIAN LITERATURE. By ALBRECHT WEBER. Translated from the Second German Edition by John Mann, M.A., and Theodok Zachariae, Ph.D., with the sanction of the Author. Dr. BuHLER, Inspector of Schools in India, writes: — "When I was Pro- fessor of Oriental Languages in Elphinstone College, I frequently felt the want of such a work to which I could refer the students." Professor CowELL, of Cambridge, writes : — "It will be especially useful to the students in our Indian colleges and universities. I used to long for such a book when I was teaching in Calcutta. 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A SKETCH OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES OF THE EAST INDIES. By ROBERT N. GUST. The Author has attempted to fill up a vacuum, the inconvenience of which pressed itself on his notice. Much had been written about the languages of the East Indies, but the extent of our present knowledge had not even been brought to a focus. It occurred to him that it might be of use to others to publish in an arranged form the notes which he had collected for his own edification. •' Supplies a deficiency which has long been felt." — Times. " The Ijook before us is then a valuable contril:tution to philological science. It passes imder review a vast number of languages, and it gives, or professes to give, in every case the sum and substance of the oiiinions and judgments of the best-informed writers. " — Saturday Eevieio. Second Corrected Edition, post 8vo, pp. xii. — 116, cloth, price 5s. THE BIRTH OF THE WAR-GOD. A Poem. By KALIDASA. Translated from the Sanskrit into Engli.sh Verse by Ralph T. H. 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" It is no slight gain when such subjects are treated fairly and fully in a moderate space ; and we need only add that the few wants which we may hope to see supplied in new editions detract but little from the general excellence of Mr. Dowson's work." — Saturday Revleio. Post 8vo, with View of Mecca, i)p. cxii. — 172, cloth, price 9s. SELECTIONS FROM THE KORAN. By EDWAPvD WILLIAM LANE, Hon. Doctor of Literature, Leyden &c., tc. ; Translator of " The Thousand and One Nights ;" &c., &c. A New Edition, Revised and Enlarged, with an Introduction by Stanley Lane Poole. "... Has been long esteemed in this country as the compilation of one of the greatest Arabic scholars of the time, the late Mr. Lane, the well-known translator of the ' Arabian Nights. "... The present editor has enhanced the value of his relative's work by divesting the text of a great deal of extraneous matter introduced by way of comment, and prefixing an introduction." — Times. 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" In this volume we have the thovightful impressions of a thoughtful man on some of the most important questions connected with our Indian Emi^ire. . . . An en- lightened oVj.sei-vanc man, travelling among an enlightened obsei'vantiieople, Professor Monier Williams has brought before the puljlic in a pleasant form more of the manners and customs of the Queen's Indian subjects than we ever remember to have seen in any one work. He not only deserves the thanks of every Englishman for this able contribution to the study of Slodern India — a subject with which we shoiild be specially familiar — but he deserves the thanks of every Indian, Parsee or Hindu, Buddhi.st and Moslem, for his clear exposition of their manners, their creeds, and their necessities."— Tijjies. TR UBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. Post 8vo, pi^, xliv, — 27^, cloth, price 14s. METRICAL TRANSLATIONS FROM SANSKRIT WRITERS. With an Introduction, many Prose Versions, and Parallel Passages from Classical Authors. By J. 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Vocabulary of the Dialects of the Kiranti Language.— III. Grammatical Analysis of the Vayu Languaae. Tiie Vayu Grammar IV. Analysis of the Bahing Dialect of the Kiranti I. Second Edition, post 8vo, pp. xxvi.— 244, cloth, price los. 6d. THE GULISTAN; Or, ROSE GARDEN OF SHEKH MUSHLIU'D-DIN SADI OF SHIRAZ. Translated for the First Time into Prose and Verse, with an Introductory Preface, and a Life of the Author, from the Atish Kadah, By EDJ^ARD B. EASTWICK, C.B., M.A., F.R.S., M.R.A.S., Of Merton College, Oxford, &c. " It is a very fair rendering of the origiuaV— Times. " The new edition has long been desired, and -^iU be welcomed by all who take any interest m Oriental poetry. The Gulistan is a typical Persian verse-book of the highest order._ I\Ir. Eastwick's rhymed translation . . . has long established itself in a secure position as the best version of Sadi's finest work."— Academy. " It is both faithfully and gracefully executed."— Taipei. TRUBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. Post 8vo, pp. 496, cloth, price i8s. LINGUISTIC AND ORIENTAL ESSAYS. Written from the Year 1846 to 1878. By ROBERT NEEDHAM OUST, Late Member of Her Majesty's Indian Civil Service ; Hon. Secretary to the Royal Asiatic Society ; and Author of " The Modern Languages of the East Indies." " We know none who has described Indian life, especially the life of the natives, with so much learning, sympathy, and literary talent." — Academy. "It is impossible to do justice to any of these essays in the space at our command. . . . But they seem to us to be full of suggestive and original remarks." — &t. James's Gazette. " His book contains a vast amount of information, ... of much interest to every intelligent reader. It is, he tells us, the result of thirty-five years of inquiry, reflection, and speculation, and that on subjects as full of fascination as of food for thought."— Ta^^/eJ. " The essays exhibit such a thorough acquaintance with the history and antiquities of India as to entitle him to speak as one having auth.oritj."—Edinbiirg}t. Daily Revleio. " The author speaks with the authority of personal experience It is this constant association with the coiuitry and the people which gives such a vividness to many of the pages," — Athenceum. Post 8vo, pp. civ. — 348, cloth, price i8s. BUDDHIST BIRTH STORIES; or, Jataka Tales. The Oldest Collection of Folk-lore Extant : BEING THE JATAKATTHAVANNANA, For the first time Edited in the original Pali. By V. FAUSBOLL. And Translated by T. W. Rhys Davids. Translation. Volume I. "These are tales supposed to have been told by the Buddha of what he had seen and heard in his previous births. They are probably the nearest representatives of the original Aryan stories from which sprang the folk-lore of Europe as well as India, and from which the Semitic nations also borrowed much. The introduction contains a most interesting disquisition on the migrations of these fables, tracing their reappearance in the various groups of folk-lore legends respectively known as '.ffisop's Fables,' the ' Hitopadesa,' the Calilag and Damnag series, and even 'The Arabian Nights.' Among other old friends, we meet with a version of the Judgment of Solomon, which proves, after all, to be an Aryan, and not a Semitic tule."— Times. " It is now some years since Mr. Rhys Davids asserted his right to be heard on this subject by his able article on Buddhism in the new edition of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica. ' " — Leeds Mercury. "All who are interested in Buddhist literature ought to feel deeply indebted to Mr. Rhys Davids. His well-established reputation as a Pali scholar is a sufficient guarantee for the fidelity of his version, and the style of his translations is deserving of high praise." — Academy. " It is certain that no more competent expositor of Buddhism could be found than Mr. Rhys Davids, and that these Birth Stories will be of the gi-eatest interest and importance to students. In the Jataka book we have, then, a priceless record of the earliest imaginative literature of our race ; and Mr. Rhys Davids is weU warranted in claiming that it presents to us a neaiiy complete picture of the social life and customs and popular beliefs of the common people of Aryan tribes, closely related to ourselves, just as they were passing through the first stages of civilisation. "—5^ James's Gazette. TRUBNER'S ORIENTAL SERIES. Post 8vo, pp. xxviii.— 362, cloth, price 14s. A TALMUDIC MISCELLANY; Or, a thousand AND ONE EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD, THE MIDRASHIM, AND THE KABBALAH. Compiled and Translated by PAUL ISAAC HERSHON, Author of " Genesis According to the Talmud," &c. With Notes and Copious Indexes. " To obtaui in so concise and handy a form as this volume a general idea of the Talmud is a boon to Christians at least." — Times. " This is a new volume of the ' Oriental Series,' and its peculiar and popular character will make it attractive to general readers. IMr. Hershon is a very com- petent scholar. . . . The present selection contains samples of the good, bad, and indifferent, and especially extracts that throw light upon the Scriptures. ' The extracts have been all derived, word for word, and made at first hand, and references are carefully given." — British Quarterly Review. " Mr. Hershon's book, at all events, will convey to English readers a more complete and truthful notion of the Talmud than any other work that has yet appeared "— Daily News. "Without overlooking in the slightest the several attractions of the previous volumes of the ' Oriental Series.' we have no hesitation in saying that this surpasses them all in interest." — Edinburgh Daily Revieio. " Jlr. Hershon has done this ; he has taken samples from all parts of the Talmud and thus given English readers what is, we beheve, a fair set of specimens which they can test for themselves."— T/ie Record. " Altogether we beheve that this book is by far the best fitted in the present state of knowledge to enable the general reader or the ordinary student to gain a fair and unbiassed conception of the multifarious contents of the wonderful miscellany which can only be truly understood— so Jewish pride asserts— by the life-long devotion of scholars of the Chosen People." — Inquirer. " The value and importance of this volume consist in the fact that scarcely a single extract is given in its pages but throws some light, direct or refracted, upon those Scriptures winch are the common heritage of Jew and Christian alike."— /o/i)i Bull. " His acquaintance with the Talmud, ^X\ PREFACE. The following sketch of the Keligions of India appeared originally in 1879 as an article in the Enmjclop^clie dcs Sciences Beligieuses, which is published in Paris under the editorship of Professor Lichtenberger. My aim in com- posing it was to present, to that class of readers who take interest in questions of historical theology, but who happen to have no special acquaintance with Indianist studies, a r4sitm4, which should be as faithful and realistic as possible, of the latest results of inquiry in all provinces of this vast domain. At first I thought I might comprise all I had to say in some fifty pages ; but I soon saw that within a space so limited, the w^ork I had undertaken, and which I intended should assume the form of a statement of facts rather than of a series of speculative deductions, would prove absolutely superficial and be sure to give rise to manifold misapprehensions. This first difficulty was easily got over through the friendly liberality of the Editor of the Encyclopedic, for, as soon as aware of it, he handsomely offered to concede to me whatever space I might need. Other difficulties remained, however, besides those connected with the subject in itself — wdiich is one of boundless extent and intricacy, and which no special work, so far as I knew, had as yet treated at once as a whole and in detailed particularity — those, viz., which arose out of the general plan of the w^ork in which my sketch was to appear as an article. The Encyclopddie admitted only of a small number of divisions into chapters, and no notes. X PREFACE. I had not, therefore, the resource of being able to relegate my impedimenta to the foot of the pages, a resource which in such a case was almost indispensable, since I had to address a reader who was not a specialist, and I was my- self averse to be obliged to limit myself to a colourless and inexact statement. All I had to say and explain must either be said and explained in the text, or suppressed altogether. The result was that I loaded my text to the utmost possible extent, often, I must say, at the expense of fluency of diction, and I also suppressed a good deal. I left out, with no small reluctance, more than one remark, which, though of secondary, was yet of serviceable impor- tance, because it would have interrupted the continuity of what I sought mainly to develop. I sacrificed especially a considerable number of those particularities, such as not unfrequently defy all attempts at circumlocution, yet im- part to matters the exact shade of meaning that belongs to them, but which would have required observations in explanation such as I could have introduced only at the expense of interlarding my pages with an array of in- congruous parentheses. In these circumstances I did all I could to retain at least as much as possible of the sub- stance ; and those Indianists who may be pleased to look into my work will see, I think, that under the enforced generalities of my exposition there lies concealed a certain amount of minuteness of investio-ation. o These shortcomings I was able to remedy in a measure in the impressions which I was solicited to issue in a separate form shortly after, and to which I was free to add annotations. By this means it was possible to append the bibliography, as well as a goodly number of detached re- marks and technical details. As to the text itself, even if I had had the necessary time, it would have been difficult to have modified it in any important particular. The re- daction of a scientific treatise written without divisions into chapters and intended to remain without notes, must assume a form more or less of an abnormal character. If PREFACE. xi tlie book is to be of value, tliis defect of external resources would have to be compensated for by its internal struc- ture. In all its sections it would require to present a more explicitly reasoned sequence of ideas, and to possess to some extent more compactness of structure, into which the introduction of new matter would be attended with difficulty. The article was therefore reproduced in the Trench edition without alterations. For this very reason .also the present edition is in these respects pretty much the same as the French original. Certain inaccuracies in detail have been corrected ; in some passages the text has been relieved to the expansion of the notes ; in others, though more rarely, material intended at first to appear in the footnotes has been admitted into the body of the work ; the transcription of Hindu terms in particular has been rendered throughout more rigorous and complete ; but in other respects, the text is unaltered, and the additions, as at first, have been committed to the notes. These last have not merely been brought up to date, so as to give the latest results,^ but rendered in general more complete than they were in the French edition, in which they had been thrown together in a somewhat hurried fashion. In my regard, they are not calculated to change the character of the work, which has no pretence in its present form, any more than its original, to teach anything to adepts in Indianist studies. They must needs impart an authoritative weight to my statements, which, except where the original authorities were inaccessible to ^ The redroction of these notes Sacred Books of the East, Oxford, belongs to the spring of 1880 ; some 1881 : vol. x. The Dhammapada, few were added in December of the transl. by F. Max Miiller ; the same year. I avail myself of this Sutta-Nipata transl. from Pali by V. opportunity to mention the following Fausboll ; vol. xi. BiKldhist Suttas, works which I first became aware transl. from Pali by T. W. Rhys of only after the correction of the Davids. H. Kern, Geschiedenis van proofs : — A. Ludwig, Commentar ziir het Buddhisme in Indie, Haarlem, Rigveda - Ubersetzung, ister Theil, 1 881 (in course of pnblicatitin). E. Prag, 1 88 1. A. Kaegi, Der Eig- Trumpp, Die Religion der Sikhs, veda, die iilteste Literatur der nach den Quellen dargestellt, Leip- Inder, 2te Auflage, Leipzig, 18S1. zig, 1881. xii PREFACE. me, have not been made on the basis of documents at second hand. They are fitted anyliow to give to those who have only a slight acquaintance with the details of our studies, some idea at least of the immense amount of labour which has within the century been expended on the subject of India. With the view of making this evident I have been careful to supply a rather extensive bibliography, in which the reader will perhaps remark a greater array of references than was necessary to justify my statements. I have, however, prescribed here certain limits to myself. I have not, for instance, except when absolutely necessary, mentioned any books which I did not happen to have by me (in which category I include a host of native publications, with the titles of which I could have easily amplified my references) ; neither have I re- ferred to works, which, though doubtless not without their value at the time when they appeared, are now out of date, and in which the true and the false are to such an extent intermingled that the citation of them, without considerable correction in an elementary treatise such as this, would have only served to confuse and mislead the uninitiated reader. But except in these cases, and such as I may have omitted from want of recollection, I have endeavoured as much as possible to point out the place of each, especially that of those who led the van in this interesting series of investigations. In fine, as I have already explained, a good many of the notes are simple additions, and ought to be accepted as a sort of appendix in continuation of the text. Having said this much of the general conditions under which this work was undertaken and drawn up, I have still, with the reader's indulgence, some exjDlanations to make in regard to a matter or two belonging to the con- tents, in regard to questions which I have thought I ought to waive as being in my opinion not yet ripe for solution, and also as regards the restriction I have imposed on PREFACE. xiii myself in not introducing into my exposition any pro- nounced peculiarities of private opinion. The reader who peruses with intelligence what I have written, and is cm courant with Indianist studies, will not fail to remark that my views on the Yeda are not precisely the same as those which are most generally accepted. Tor in it I recognise a literature that is pre-eminently sacerdotal, and in no sense a popular one ; and from this conclusion I do not, as is ordinarily done, except even the Hymns, the most ancient of the documents. Neither in the language nor in the thought of the Rig- Veda have I been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity which so many are fain to see in it. The poetry it contains appears to me, on the contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions to mysticism and theosophic insight ; and the manner of its expression is such as reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in use among certain small groups of initiated than the poetic language of a large community. And these features I am constrained to remark as characteristic of the whole collection; not that they assert themselves with equal emphasis in all the Hymns — the most abstruse imaginings being not without their moments of simplicity of concep- tion ; but there are very few of these Hymns which do not show some trace of them, and it is always difficult to find in the book and to extract a clearly defined portion of per- fectly natural and simple conception. In all these respects the spirit of the Rig-Yeda appears to me to be more allied than is usually supposed to that which prevails in the other Vedic collections, and in the Brahmanas, This conviction, which I had already expressed emphatically enough more than once in the Bevue Critique, I have not felt called upon to urge here, in a work such as this from which all discussion should be excluded as much as possible. I have, nevertheless, given it such expression even here that a careful reader, if he looks, will not fail to recognise it ; xiv PREFACE. anyhow it lias not escaped the notice of such an expert in the affairs of India as Professor Thiele of Leyden, with whom I am happy to find myself in harmony of view on the subject of the Veda. That critic has, in consequence, not without reason, challenged ^ me to say why I have not insisted on it more, and if, after this first avowal, I was warranted to draw such a sharp distinction as I have done between the epoch of the Hymns and that of the Brah- manas. Whether I was right or wrong in doing so, it is not for me to decide. I have pointed out the differences which, as it appears to me, we must admit to exist between the two epochs referred to, differences which I do not think can be accounted for simply by the diverse nature of the docu- ments. In the Brahmanas we have a sacred literature and a new liturgy ; the priesthood that inspired the Hymns has become a caste ; and there is a theory which is given forth as a law for this caste, as well as the others — one which, whether true or imaginary, is nevertheless in itself a fact. Were it only for these reasons, I should consider myself bound to maintain the generally accepted distinction ; but, not to adduce more, I confess that I had another reason — the fear, viz., of being drawn into the subject further than was desirable in a work such as this. The Hymns, as I have already remarked, do not appear to me to show the least trace of popular derivation. I rather imagine that they emanate from a narrow circle of priests, and that they reflect a somewhat singular view of things. Not only can I not accept the generally received opinion that Yedic and Aryan are synonymous terms, I am even not at all sure to what extent we are right in speaking of a Yedic people. Not that communities did not then worship the gods of the Veda, but I doubt very much if they regarded them as they are represented in the Hymns, any more than that they afterwards sacrificed to them in community after the rites prescribed in the Brah- 1 In the Tlicolojische Tijdschrift of July iSSo. PREFA CE. XV manas. If there is any justice in tliese views, it is evident that a literature such as this will only embrace what is within the scope of a limited horizon, and will have autho- ritative weight only in regard to things in a more or less special reference, and that the negative conclusions espe- cially which may be deduced from such documents must be received with not a little reservation. A sinoie instance, to which I limit myself, will suffice for illustration. Suppose that certain hymns of the tenth book of the Rig- Veda — a book which the majority of critics look upon with distrust — had not come down to us, what would we learn from the rest of the collection respecting the worship of the manes of the departed ? We might know that India paid homage to certain powers called Pitris, or Fathers, but we could not infer from that, any more than from the later worship of the Matris, or Mothers, this worship of ancestors, or spirits of the dead, which, as the comparative study of the beliefs, customs, and institutions of Greece and Eome shows us, was nevertheless from the remotest antiquity one of the principal sources of public and private right, one of the bases of the family and the civic community. I am therefore far from believingj that the Yeda has taught us everything on the ancient social and religious condition of even Aryan India, or that everything there can be accounted for by reference to it. Outside of it I see room not only for superstitious beliefs, but for real popular religions, more or less distinct from that which we find in it ; and on this point, we shall arrive at more than one conclusion from the more profound study of the subsequent period. We shall perhaps find that, in this respect also, the past did not differ so much from the present as might at first appear, that India has always had, alongside of its Yeda, something equivalent to its great ^ivaite and Vishnuite religions, which we see in the ascendant at a later date, and that these anyhow existed contemporaneously with it for a very much longer period than has till now been generally supposed. XVI PREFACE. I have in a summary way indicated these views in my work, and that in more passages than one ; but it is easy to see how, if I had laid greater stress on them, they might have modified certain parts of my exposition. I did not think that I ought to go against the received opinions on this matter, or that in addressing a public imperfectly qualified to judge, I should attach more weif^ht to my private doubts than the almost unanimous consent of scholars more learned than myself. If it is a wrong that I have done, I confess it, and that as one which I committed wilfully. And, after all, there is so much that is uncertain in this obscure past, and what Whitney says in regard to dates, " in Indian literary his- tory," that they are so many " pins set up to be bowled down again," is so applicable to all hypotheses in this field, that a new opinion would do well to allow itself some considerable time to ripen. I am accordingly of opinion that the Neo-Brahmanic religions are of very ancient date in India. On the other hand, their positive history is comparatively modern ; it commences not much earlier than the time when it becomes dispersed and distracted among that confusion of sects which has prolonged itself to our own time. In order to render an account of these sects, it was my duty to classify them, and I have done so according to the philosophic systems which seem to have at each period prevailed among them. This arrangement I have adopted only in defect of another ; for tile merely chronological succession, besides being for the earlier epochs highly uncertain, and calculated to involve me in endless repetitions, would have been of slender sig- nificance in itself, and would have resolved itself into a bare enumeration, since it is impossible to show, in most cases here, that a succession of the sort involves filiation. I confess, however, that the arrangement adopted is not very satisfactory. The formulce of metaphysics have penetrated so deeply into the modes PREFACE. xvii of thinking and feeling prevalent in India, that they may in most cases be treated as we do those common quan- tities which we eliminate in calculation ; and it is always hazardous to judge by them of movements of such religious intensity. My sole excuse in this case is the necessity I was under of having some principle of classi- fication, and the difficulty, amounting to impossibility, of discovering another. I have, before I conclude, to say a few words on two questions which I have purposely evaded, as being hitherto unsusceptible of a satisfactory solution. The first is the question of Caste, its origin and successive developments. I did not entangle myself in this ques- tion, in the first place, because of its exceeding obscurity. In fact, we have already a Brahmanical theory of caste, in regard to which we should require to know how far it is true to facts before we venture on explanations, which might very readily prove of no greater validity than a work of romance. I gave this question the go- by, in the second place, because, as respects antiquity, the problem, taken as a whole, is a social rather than a religious one. In sectarian India at present, and since the appearance of foreign proselytising religions, caste is the express badge of Hinduism. The man who is a member of a caste is a Hindu ; he who is not, is not a Hindu. And caste is not merely the symbol of Hindu- ism; but, according to the testimony of all who have studied it on the spot, it is its stronghold. It is this, much more than their creeds, which attaches the masses to these vague religions, and gives them such astonishing vitality. It is, therefore, a religious factor of the first order, and, on this score, I felt bound to indicate the part it now plays and its present condition. But there is no reason to presume that it was the same in the antiquity to which its institution is usually referred, and in which the theory at any rate took its rise that is reputed to regulate it. Still less is it probable that the b xviii PREFACE. existing castes, with one exception, that of the Brahmans, are the heirs in a direct line of the ancient cdtur- varnya. I have, therefore, felt free to discharge myself from the obligation of inquiring into the origin and more or less probable transformations of the latter, and it was enough to indicate the period onward from which the texts represent the sacerdotal caste as definitely estab- lished ; that is to say, when we first meet with a precise formula, giving a religious sanction to a state of things which in all probability existed in fact from time im- memorial. The second question of which I have steadily kept clear, is that of the relations which happen to have arisen between the Aryan religions of India and the systems of belief professed either by foreign peoples, or by races ethnographically distinct that had settled in the country. This inquiry thrust itself upon me in relation to Chris- tianity and Islamism ; and there is nothing I should have wished more than to do as much in reference to other historical relations of the same kind, if I had thought I could do so with any profit. There is, as regards India, some weak and uncertain indications of a possible ex- change of ideas with Babylon, and the legend of the Deluge might not improbably have come from that quarter. But all that can be done in regard to this, is to put the question. Tor a much stronger reason I have shrunk from following Baron d'Eckstein into the inves- tigation of the far more hypothetical relations with Egypt and Asia Minor. In a very friendly and far too eulogistic criticism of the present work, E. Eenan has been pleased to express some regret on this score ; ^ and I am very far from maintaining, for my part, that the time will not come when it will be necessary to resume researches in this direction; but to do so now would, in my opinion, be to advance forward in total darkness. The question is different as regards the re- ^ In the Journal Asiatique of June 1880. PREFACE. xix ligions of tlie aboriginal races of India. Here the influences and borrowings from one side, that of the aborigines, are evident, and from the other, the side of the Hindus, are a priori extremely probable, an inter- change of this kind being always moi'e or less reciprocal. Only it is very difficult to say exactly what the con- quering race must have borrowed in this way from the aboriginal races. The religions of these peoples survive in fact under two forms : either in the condition of popular superstitions, which resemble what they are elsewhere ; or, as among the tribes which have remained more or less savage, in the condition of national religions to some extent inoculated with Hindu ideas and modes of expression. These religions, in their turn, if yve analyse them, are resolvable, on the one hand, into those beliefs and practices of an inferior type, having relation to idol or animal worship, such as we find in all communities that are uncivilised, and, on the other hand, into the worship of the divinities of nature and the elements, such as personifications of the sun, heaven, the earth, the mountains — that is to say, of systems of worship which are not essentially different from those which we meet with at first among the Hindus. In these circumstances, it is obvious that in special studies we mio'ht be able to note features of detail which have been borrowed by the more civilised race from that which is less so, but that we could not do much towards determining the effect of these influences and borrowings in their general import, the only question to which it would be possible to give prominency here. I have only to explain the notation I have adopted in the transcription of the, Hindu terms. The circumflex accent, as in d, i, Iju, indicates that the vowel is long; the vowels r and I are transcribed by ri and li. It will be observed that u and ^^ should be pronounced like the French sound ou, and that ai and au are always diph- thongs. An aspirated consonant is followed by h, and XX PREFACE. this aspiration ought to be distinctly expressed after the principal articulation, as in inhJiorn. Of the gutterals, g and gh are always hard, and the nasal of this order is marked by n, to be pronounced as in song. The palates c and j (and consequently their corresponding aspirates) are pronounced as in challenge, journey, and the nasal of the same order, n, like this letter in Spanish. The lingual consonants, which, to our ear, do not differ perceptibly from the dentals, are rendered by t, th, d, dh, 01. The sibilants g and sh are both pronounced almost as sh in English. The anusvara (the neuter or final nasal) is marked by m, and the visarga (the soft and final aspiration) by h. The orthography has been rendered throughout rigorous and scientifically exact; only in a small number of modern names have I kept to the orthography in general use. A. BAETH. Paris, September 1881. INTRODUCTION. India has not only preserved for us in her Yedas the most ancient and complete documents for the study of the old religious beliefs founded on nature-worship, which, in an extremely remote past, were common to all the branches of the Indo-European family ; she is also the only country where these beliefs, in spite of many changes both in form and fortune, continue to subsist up to the present time. Whilst everywhere else they have been either as good as extinguished by monotheistic religions of foreign origin, in some instances without leaving behind them a single direct and authentic trace of their presence, or abruptly cut short in their evolution and forced to survive within the barriers, henceforth immovable, of a petty Church, as in the case of Parseeism, — in India alone they present up to this time, as a rich and varied literature attests, a conti- nuous, self-determined development, in the course of which, instead of contracting, they have continued to enlarge their borders. It is owing in a great measure to this extraordinary longevity that such an interest attaches to the separate and independent study of the Hindu religions, irrespective alto- gether of the estimate we may form of their dogmatic or practical worth. Nowhere else do we meet with circum- stances, on the whole, so favourable for the study of the successive transformations and destiny, so to speak, of a xxii INTRODUCTION. polytheistic idea of the universe. Among all the kindred conceptions that we meet with, there is not another which has shown itself so vigorous, so flexible, so apt as this to assume the most diverse forms, and so dexterous in recon- ciling all extremes, from the most refined idealism to the grossest idolatry ; none has succeeded so well in repairing its losses ; no one has possessed in such a high degree the power of producing and reproducing new sects, even great religions, and of resisting, by perpetual regenesis in this way from itself, all the causes which might destroy it, at once those due to internal waste and those due to external opposition. But for this very reason, too, it becomes difficult to conceive in its totality, and in the succes- sive additions made to it, this vast religious structure, the work, according to the most probable computations, of more than thirty centuries of a history that is without chronology, a perfect labyrinth of buildings, involved one in another, within whose windings the first explorers, almost without exception, went astray, so misleading is the official account of them, so many ruins do we meet with of a venerable aspect, and which yet are only of yesterday. Thanks to the discovery of the Yedas,^ how- 1 Our first positive acquaintance Sanscrite et Latine," 1838; and the with the Veda dates from the publi- three memoirs by the founder of the cation of the celebrated essay of H. scientific interpretation of the Veda, T. Colebrooke, "On the Vedas or Prof. R Roth, "Zur Litteratur und Sacred Writings of the Hindus," GeschichtedesWeda," 1846. Among inserted in vol. viii. of the Asiatic the more recent publications we take Researches, 1805, and reproduced in leave to mention, A. Weber, " Aka- the " Miscellaneous Essays " of that demische Vorlesungen iiber Indische great Indianist. Next to this funda- Literaturgeschichte," 1852, 2d ed. mental work we must mention the 1 876, translated into French by A. first attempts at an edition of the Sadons, 1 859 ; into English by J. Rig- Veda by the lamented Fr. Rosen, Mann and Th. Zachariae, 1878; entitled " Rigveds Specimen," 1 830 ; Max Muller, " A History of Ancient " Rig-Veda Sanhita, liber primus, Sanscrit Literature as far as it illus- INTROD UCTION. xxiii ever, wliicli has laid bare for us the first foundations of the edifice, it is now easier for us to ascertain where we are in its mazes, although we are very far from saying that the light of day has at length penetrated into all its compartments, and that we are now able to sketch a plan of it that will be free from lacuncc. Anyhow, in undertaking to describe within a limited number of pages this complex whole, it is clear we must resolve at the outset to content ourselves with a summary, and, it may be, disappointingly incomplete sketch. Many significant and characteristic points, the most of the realia, and an immense body of myths and legends, and every- thing which cannot be summarised, we shall have to omit. Of the history of these systems, which have not, however, been the result of mere abstract thinking, but which have grown up in vital relation with the complex and agitated life of every human institution alongside of them, we shall have time to examine only the internal, and, in some de- gree, ideal side — the development of the doctrines and their affiliation. We shall not be able to study them at once as religions and mythologies. We propose, however, to be more minute in what relates to the Vedas, out of regard to their exceptional importance, since the whole religious thought of India already exists in germ in these old books. Only we shall make no attempt to go farther back, or by trates the Primitive Religion of the Vedic portion being due to Roth), Brahmans," 1859, 2d ed. i860. The has, more than any other work, " Indische Studien," which A. Weber contributed to the rapid advance- edits, and the first volume of which ment of these studies. For the in- appeared in 1 849, are mainly devoted formation, in part apocryphal, current to the investigation of Vedic litera- in Europe at an earlier date on the ture ; and the great Sanscrit Die- Veda, see Max Mviller, " Lectures on tionary of St. Petersburg, edited the Science of Language," vol, i. p. between the years 1855 and 1878 I'j-^seq.; and a very curious note by by A. Bohtlingk and R. Roth (the A. C. Burnell, in Ind. Antiq., viii. 98. xxiv INTRODUCTION. the help of the comparative methods to trace up to their origin even the Vedic divinities and forms of thinking. Within these limitations the task we propose to ourselves will, we think, prove vast enough, and we feel only too keenly how imperfect our work will in the end be found to be. We by no means flatter ourselves that we have always succeeded in distinguishing the essential points, in disentangling the principal threads, and preserving to every element in our exposition its just proportion and place. All that we can pledge ourselves to do is, that we shall guard ourselves against introducing into it either a too pronounced peculiarity of view or a factitious lucidity and arran clement. PRIHClLl'. THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. I. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. THE RIG-YEDA. General view of Vedic literature. — Its age and successive formation ; priority of the Hymns of the Rig- Veda. — Principal divinities of the Hymns : the World and its objects, Heaven and Earth, the Sun, Moon, and Stars. — Agni and Soma. — Indra, the Maruts, E.udra, Vajoi Parjanya. — Brihaspati and Vac. — Varuna. — Aditi and the Adityas. — The Solar divinities : Surya, Savitri, Vishnu, Pushan. — Ushas, the Agvins, Tvashtri, the Ribhus. — Yama, the Pitris and the Future Life. — Abstract personifications and mythical figures. — Ab- sence of a hierarchy and a classification of the Gods. — Way in M^hich the Myths have been treated in the Hymns. — Monotheistic concep- tions : Prajapati, Vi9vakarman, Svayambhu, &c. — Pantheistic cosmo- gony : Purusha, the primordial substance, no eschatology. — Piety and morality ; co-existence of baser forms of belief and practice, as in part preserved in the Atharva-Veda. — Cultus: speculations regarding sacri- fice and prayer : the rita and the brahman. — Essentially sacerdotal character of this religion. The most ancient documents we possess connected with the religions of India are the collections of writings called the Vedas. These are sometimes reckoned three in number and sometimes four, according as the reference is to the collections themselves or to the nature of their contents; and of these two modes of reckoning, the second is the more ancient.^ One of the oldest divisions of the mantras, 1 Aitar. Br., v. 32, i ; Taittir. Br., ill. 10, ii, 5 ; Catap. Br., v. 5, 5, 10. A 2 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. or liturgical texts, is, in fact, that wliicli distributes tliem into ric, yajus, and sdman^ or, according to a later defini- tion,2 but one wliicli may be accepted as valid for a period of much greater antiquity,^ into (a) hymns, more strictly verses of invocation and praise, which were chanted with a loud voice : into (h) formulae prescribed with reference to the various acts of sacrifice, which were muttered in a low voice : and into (c) chants of a more or less complex structure, and followed by a refrain which was sung in chorus. To possess an accurate knowledge of the rics, the yajus, and the samans, was to possess the " triple science," the triple Yeda. When, on the other hand, there is men- tion of the four Yedas,^ the reference is to the four collec- tions as they exist at present, viz., the Rig- Veda, which includes the body of the hymns ; the Yajur- Veda, in which all the prescribed formulae are collected ; the Sdma- Veda, which contains the chants (the texts of which are, with a very few exceptions, verses of the Rig- Yeda ^) ; and the Atharva- Veda, a collection of hymns like the Rig- Yeda, but of which the texts, when they are not common to the two collections, are in part of later date, and must have been employed in the ritual of a different worship. Be- sides those collections of mantras, i.e., of liturgical and ritualistic texts, called Samhitds, each Yeda still con- tains, as a second part, one or more jBrdhmanas, or trea- tises on the ceremonial system, in which, with reference to prescriptions in regard to ritual, there are preserved numerous legends, theological speculations, &c., as well as 1 Atharva- Veda, vii. 54, 2 ; see Br., v. 32, 3, 4 ; Catap. Br., ii. 3, 3, Rig- Veda, x. 90, 9; Tait. Samb., i. 17. 2, 3, 3 ; Catap. Br., iv. 6, 7, i. ^ Cbandog. Up., vii. I, 2 ; Ath.- - The official definition is given Veda, x. 7, 20; Brihadar. Up., ii. in tlie Mimamsa-Sutras, ii. I, 35-37, 4, 10. pi). 128, 129, of the edition of the ^ Interesting information on the Bibliotheca Indica ; see also Sayana's mode of the formation and the cha- Commentary on the Rig-Veda, t. i. racter of these chants will be found p. 23, and Commentary on the Tait- in the introdviction to A. C. Burnell's tiriya Sanihitd, t. i. p. 28, edition of edition of the Arsbeyabrabmana, the Bibliotheca Indica ; Prastbana- pp. xi., xli. See also Tb. Aufrecht, bheda an. Ind. Stud., i. p. 14. Die Hymnen des Rigveda, 2d ed., 2 Atharva- Veda, xii. I, 38; Aitar. Preface, p. xxxviii. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. tlie first attempts at exegesis. In tlie most ancient redac- tion of the Yajur-Veda, which is pre-eminently the Veda that bears on ritual, in the Black Yajus, as it is called, these two parts are still mixed up together.^ Finally, of each Veda there existed several recensions called gdkhcis, or branches, between which there appeared very considerable discrepancies at times.^ Of these recensions, in so far as 1 There are for this Veda, as for the others, two collections, the one termed theSamhitaand the other the Brahmana ; but they both contain at once liturgical texts and ritualistic. 2 I. Of this literature there have been published, with critical elabora- tions, First, the Rig- Veda — (a.) Samhita : Rig - Veda - San- hita, together with the commentary of Sayaiiacharya, edited by Max Miiller, 6 vols, in 4to, 1849-74. A reprint without thecommeutary, The Hymns of the Rig- Veda in Sanhita and Pada Texts, 1 873, Die Hymnen des Rigveda, herausgegeben von Th, Aufrecht, 2 vols. 8vo, 1861-63, form- ing vols, vi., vii., of the Indische Stu- dien, and of which a second edition was issued in 1 877. These were trans- lated into French by A. Langlois, 1848-51, reprinted in 1872 ; into English by H. H. Wilson and E. B. Co well, 1850-63, reprinted in 1868, and by Max Miiller in 1869 (first vol- ume only) ; into German by A. Lud- wig, 1876-79, and by H. Grassmann, 1876-77. An edition of the text, with translations into English and Marhatti, The Vedarthayatna by Shankar Pandit, has since i2>'j6 been in the course of publication at Bom- bay. Of an edition of the text be- gun by E. Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica (Calcutta, 1 848), and accom- panied with a commentary and a translation into English, there have appeared only four parts. (6.) Brahmana : The Aitareya Brahmanam of the Rigveda, edited and translated by M. Hang, 2 vols. 8vo, Bombay, 1 863. A more cor- rect edition has just been issued by Th. Aufrecht, Das Aitareya Brah- mana mit Ausziigen aus dem Com- mentare von Sayanacarya, Bonn, 1879. The Aitareya Aranyaka, with the commentary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Rajendralala Mitra, Cal- cutta, 1876 (Biblioth. Indica). The Aranyakas are supplements to the Brahmanas. 2. The Atharva-Veda. (a.) Sarnliita: Atharva Veda San- hita, herausgegeben von R. Eolh und W. D. Whitney, 1855-56. [h.) Brahmana : The Gopatha Brahmana of the Atharva-Veda, edited by Rajendralala Mitra and Harachandra Vidyabhushana, Cal- cutta, 1872 (Biblioth. Indica). 3. The Sama-Veda. (a.) Sarnhitas ; Die Hymnen des Sama-Veda, herausgegeben, iibersezt und mit Glossar versehen, von Th. Benfey, 1848. This work has thrown into the shade the prior edition and, English translation by J. Stevenson, 1841-43. Sama Veda Sanhita, with the commentary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Satyavrata Samagrami, Calcutta, 1S74 (Biblioth. Indica). This edition, which has reached the fifth volume, comprehends all the liturgical collections of the Sama- Veda, as well as the Ganas, that is to say, the texts in the form of anthems. (b.) Brahmanas : The Tanclya Mahabrahmana, with the commen- tary of Sayana Acharya, edited by Anandachandra Vedantavagiga, 2 vols., Calcutta, 1870-74 (Biblioth. Indica). The final section of the Shadvim9abrahmana has been pub- lished and commented on by A. Weber, Zwei Vedische Texte iiber Omina und Portenta, in the Me- moirs of the Academy of Berlin, 1858. Some short Brahmanas of this ^ THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. they affect the Samhitas,the fundamental collections, a small number only has come down to us ; of the Rig-Veda, only one;^ of the Atharva-Veda, two; 2 of the Sama-Veda, three ;^ while of the Yajur-Yeda there are five, of which three are of the Black Yajus* and two of the White Yajus.^ All this united constitutes the grtcti, " the hear- ing," i.e., the sacred and revealed tradition. If we except a certain quantity of appended matter, which criticism has no difficulty in discriminating from the Veda we owe to A. C. Burnell : The Samavidhana-Br., London, 1873. The Vamga-Br., Mangalore, 1873. The Devatadhyaya-Br., ibid., 1873. The Arsheya-Br., ibid., 1 876. The same with the text of the Jaiminiya school, ibid., 1878. The Samhito- panishad-Br. , ibid., 1877. All these texts, with the exception of the last, are accompanied by the commentary of Sayana. The Vamgabrahmana had been previously published by A. Weber in his ludische Stu- dien, t, iv. We owe, moreover, to Burnell the discovery of the Jaimi- niya-Br., of which he published a fragment under the title of " A Le- gend from the Talavakara or Jaimi- niyabrahmana of the Sama Veda," Mangalore, 1878. 4. The Yajur-Veda. {a.) The White Yajus : The White Yajur-Veda, edited by A. Weber, 3 vols. 4to, 1849-59, compre- hends: (i.) TheSamhita, the Vajasa- neyi-Sanhita in the Madhyandina, and the Kanva-Cakka, with the commentary of Mahidhara ; (2.) The Catapatha Brahmana, with Ex- tracts from the Commentaries ; (3.) The Crautasutras of Katyayana, with Extracts from the Commentaries. (&.) The Black Yajus : Die Tait- tiriya-Samhita, herausgegeben von A.Weber, 1871-72, forming vols. xi. and xii. of the ludische Studien. The Sanhita, of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of Madhava Acharya, Calcutta, i860. (Biblioth. Indica). The publication, which has reached vol. iv., comprehends nearly half of the text ; the editors have been successively E. Eoer, E. B. Cowell, Mahe9acandra Nyayara- tna. The Taittiriya Brahmana of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of Sayanacharya, ed- ited by Rajendralala Mitra, 3 vols. 8vo, Calcutta, 1859-70 (Biblioth, ludica). The Taittiriya Aranyaka of the Black Yajur-Veda, with the commentary of Sayanacharya, ed- ited by Rajendralala Mitra, Calcutta, 1872 (Biblioth. Indica). For the Upanishads, which are arranged in this literature in some few cases rightly, in the majority incorrectly, see infi-a. 1 That of the Cakalakas. 2 Besides the vulgate, edited by Roth and Whitney, that of the Paip- paladis, discovered recently at Kash- mir, see R. Roth, Der Atharvaveda in Kaschmir, 1875. 3 Besides the vulgate, which is that of the Kauthumas, those of the Ranayaniyas and of the Jaiminiyas. Of "a fourth, that of the Naigeyas, we have only fragments. See Bur- nell, Riktantravyakarana, p. xxvi. 4 Those of the Taittiriyas (pub- lished), of the K^thas (see A. We- ber's Indische Studien, iii. 45 1 ; Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 97, 2d edition), of the Maitrayaniyas (see Haug, Brahma und die Brahmanen, 187 1, p. 31 ; A. Weber, Indische Studien, xiii. p. 1 17; L. Schroeder, Zeitschr. der Deutschen Morgenliind. Gesellsch., xxxiii. p. I77)- 5 Those of the Madhyandinas and of the Kanvas (published). THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 5 genuine stock, we have in these writings, as a whole, an authentic literature, which professes to be what it is, which neither asserts for itself a supernatural origin nor seeks to disguise its age by recourse to the devices of the pastiche. Interpolations and later additions are numerous enough, but these have all been made in good faith. It is nevertheless difficult to fix the age of these books, even in any approxi- mate degree. The most recent portions of the Brahmanas which have come down to us do not appear to go farther back than the fifth century before our era.^ The rest of the literature of the Yeda must be referred to a remoter antiquity, and assigned, in a sequence impossible to deter- mine with any precision, a duration, the first term of which it is absolutely impossible for us to recover. In a general way, it must be conceded that the mantras are, beyond a doubt, older than the regulations which prescribe the use of them ; but we must also admit that the entire body of these books is of more or less simultaneous growth, and conceive of each of them, in the form in which it actually exists, as the last term of a long series, the initial epoch of which must have been obviously the same for all of them. An exception, however, will require to be made as regards the great majority of the hymns of the Rig- Veda. This Samhita is, in fact, composed of several distinct collections, which proceeded, in some cases, from rival families, and belonged to tribes often at war with one another. Now, in the liturgy which we meet with in the most ancient portions of the other books, not only are ^ The two last books of the Aita- King Ajata9atru of Brihadaranyaka- reya Aranyaka, for example, are as- Up., ii. I, aud of Kaushitaki-Up., iv. cribed by tradition to (^aunaka and i, some think they recognise the his disciple A gvalayana. Colebrooke, prince of that name who was con- Miscellaneous Essays, t. i. pp. 42 temporary with Buddha. Burnouf, and 333, Cowell's edition. Max Lotus de la Bonne Loi, p. 485 ; see, Mhller's Ancient Sanskrit Litera- however, Kern, Over de Jaartelling ture, pp. 235-239. Yajnavalkya, der zuidelijke Buddhisten, p. 119. who in the Catapatha Br. belongs Several of the short Brahmanas of the already to the past, is not much Sama-Veda, the Adbhutabrahmana more ancient. See Westergaard, of the Shadvim9a, and a great part of Ueber den iiltesten Zeitraum der the Taittiriya Aranyaka are probably Indischen Geschichte, p. 77. In the much more modern still. 6 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. these distinctions in regard to origin obliterated, not only is the general body of the Hymns indiscriminately selected from, but this is done without respect to the integrity of the ancient prayers,^ a couplet being picked out here, a triplet there, and thus a body of invocations formed of a character altogether new. The liturgy of these books, therefore, is no longer the same as that which we meet with in the Hymns, and the transition from the one to the other would seem to imply a very considerable lapse of time. Speaking generally, we may say these books pre- suppose not only the existence of the chants of the Rig- Veda, but that of a collection of these more or less akin to the collection that has come down to us. Attempts have been made to estimate the length of time that would be necessary for the gradual formation of this literature, and the eleventh century before the Chris- tian era has been suggested as the age in which the poetry that produced these hymns must have flourished.^ But taking into account all the circumstances, we are of opi- nion that this term is too recent, and that the great body of the chants of the Rig-Veda must be referred back to a much earlier period. Contrary to an opinion that is often advanced, we consider also a goodly number of the hymns of the Atharva-Veda to be of a date not much more recent ;2 and some of the formulse prescribed in the Yajur-Veda are in all probability quite as ancient. As to the other litur- gical texts, tliese, when not borrowed from the Hymns or 1 We do not intend by this to In a general way, the fact in ques- affirm that in the Rig- Veda, as we tion is indubitable, although in par- tind it, we must consider all the parts ticular cases the problem is often which compose it as having preserved difficult of resolution. their original forms intact. So far '^ Max Miiller, Ancient Sanskrit from that, there are more or less Literature, p. 572 ; see A. Weber, unmistakable traces in many of them Indische Literaturgeschichte, p. 2, of their having been recast or 2d edition. readjusted. On this subject see ^ The existence of a collection of the translation by Grassmann, and the nature of our Atharva-Veda is " Siebenzig Lieder des Kigveda," involved in such formulse as Taittir. translated by K. Geldner and A. Samh., vii. 5, 11, 2, and probably Kaegi, 1875, a publication executed also in Rig- Veda, x. 90, 9. under the direction of R. Roth. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 7 other similar collections no longer extant,^ belong to an age more recent, and form with the Brahmanas the secon- dary deposit in the stratification of Vedic literature. The religion which is transmitted to us in these Hymns ^ is, in its principal features, this : Nature is throughout divine. Everything which is impressive by its sublimity, or is supposed capable of affecting us for good or evil, may become a direct object of adoration. Mountains, rivers, springs, trees, plants, are invoked as so many high powers.^ The animals which surround man, the horse by which he is borne into battle, the cow which supplies him with nourishment, the dog which keeps watch over his dwelling, the bird which, by its cry, reveals to him his future, toge- ther with that more numerous class of creatures which threaten his existence, receive from him the worship of either homage or deprecation.* There are parts even of the apparatus used in connection with sacrifice which are more than sacred to purposes of religion ; they are regarded as themselves deities.^ The very war-chariot, offensive 1 In all the ritualistic texts, even subjects the mystic and religious the most recent, we meet now and ideas of the Rig- Veda to a searching again with fragments of liturgy of analysis in a work still in course ol the same nature and character, some- publication, entitled, La Religion times quite as ancient as the Hymns, Vedique d'apres les Hymues du Rig- and which do not occur in the Sara- Veda, t. i. (Bibliotheque de I'Ecole hitas of the Rig- and the Atharva- des Hautes Etudes, fascic. xxxvi,), Veda as known to us. 1 878. 2 See J. Muir, Original Sanskrit ^ Rig- Veda, vii, 35, 8; viii. 54, 4; Texts, vol. iv,, 2ded., 1873, and vol. x, 35, 2; 64, 8; ii. 41, 16-18 ; iii. v., 1870, We refer our readers, once 33 ; vii. 47, 95, 96 ; viii. 74, 15 ; x. for all, to this expose as at once the 64, 9 ; 75 ; vii. 49 ; i, 90, 8 ; vii. 34, most complete and the most reliable 23-25; vi, 49, 14; x. 17, 14 ; 97 ; we possess of the Vedic religions, 145. Atharva-Veda, viii. 7. Max Mlillei', Ancient Sanskrit Lite- ^ Rig. Veda, i. 162, 163 ; iv. 38 ; rature, p. 525 se^/. The same author's i. 164. 26-28; iii. 53, 14; iv. 57, 4; Lectures on the Origin and Growth vi. 28; viii. loi, 15; x. 19, 169; of Religion, as illustrated by the Re- Atharva-Veda, x. 10; xii. 4 ; 5 ; Rig- ligions of India, 1878, pp. 193 seq., Veda, vii. 55 ; ii. 42, 43; x. 165'; i. 224565'., 259 seq. A. Ludwig, Die 116, 16; 191, 6; vii. 104, 17-22; Philosophischen und Religiosen An- Atharva-Veda, viii. 8, 15; 10, 29; schauuugen des Veda in ihrer Ent- ix. 2, 22 ; X. 4. wicklung, 1875 ; andDieMantralit- ^ Rig. Veda, iii. 8 ; x. 76, 175; and teratur und das Alte Indien (t. iii. of in general the Apri - suktas; see, his translation of the Rig- Veda), moreover, i, 187: i. 28, 5-8 ; iv. 58 ; 1878, pp. 257-415. A. Bergaigue Atharva-Veda, xviii. 4, 5 ; xix. 32, 8 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. and defensive weapons, the plough, the furrow which has just been traced in the soil, are the objects, not of blessing only, but of prayer.^ India is radically pantheistic, and that from its cradle onwards. Nevertheless it is neither the direct adoration of objects, even the greatest, nor that of the obvious personifications of natural phenomena, which figures most prominently in the Hymns. Thus, Aurora is certainly a great goddess ; the poets that praise her can find no colours bright enough or words passionate enough to greet this daughter of heaven, who reveals and dispenses all blessings, ushering in the days of the year and prolonging them to mortals. Her gifts are celebrated and her blessings implored, but her share in the cultus is small in comparison ; it is not, as a rule, to her that the offerings go. Almost as much must be said of the deities Heaven and Earth, although they are still revered as the primitive pair by whom the rest of the gods were begotten. In the cultus they disappear before the more personal divinities ; while in speculation they are gradually super- seded by more abstract conceptions or by more recondite symbols. Of the stars there is hardly any mention. The moon plays only a subordinate part.^ The sun itself, which figures so prominently in the myth, no longer does so to the same extent in the religious consciousness, or at most it is worshipped by preference in some of its dupli- cate forms, which possess a more complex personality and have a more abstruse meaning. The two single divinities of the first rank which have preserved their physical char- acter pure and simple are Agni and Soma. In their case, the visible and tangible objects were too near, and, above all, too sacred, to be in any greater or less degree obscured or outshone by mere personifications. JSTevertheless, means 9. The Rig-Veda, consecrated to are peculiar to the Atharva - Veda the worship of the great gods, is are devoted to these lower forms of comparatively meagre in supplying religion. information on these imperfect and, ^ Rig- Veda, iii, 53, 17-20; vi. 47, at times, merely metaphorical deifi- 26-31 ; vi. 75 ; iv. 57, 4-8. cations. On the other hand, more ^ Rig-Veda, i. 24, 10 ; 105, I, lO ; than the half of those portions which x. 64, 3; 85, 1-5, 9, 13, 18, 19, 40. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 9 were at length devised by which what was gross in the merely physical idea of a god Agni and a god Soma might be refined into more spiritual conceptions. They were invested with a subtle and complicated symbolism ; they were impregnated, so to speak, with all the mystic virtue of sacrifice; their empire was extended far beyond the world of sense, and they were conceived as cosmic agents and universal principles. Agni, in fact, is not only terrestrial fire, and the fire of the lightning and the sun ; ^ his proper native home is the mystic, invisible heaven, the abode of the eternal light and the first principles of all things.^ His births are infinite in number, whether as a germ, which is indestructible and ever begotten from itself, he starts into life every day on the altar from a piece of wood, whence he is extracted by friction (the arani), and in which he sleeps like the embryo in the womb ; ^ or whether, as son of the floods, he darts with the noise of the thunder from the bosom of the celestial rivers, where the Bhrigus (personifications of the lightning) discovered him, and the Agvins begat him with aranis of gold.* In point of fact, he is always and every- where the same, since those ancient days when, as the eldest of the s^ods, he was born in his hi^^hest dwelling^, on the bosom of the primordial waters, and when the first religious rites and the first sacrifice were broudit forth along with him.^ For he is priest by birth in heaven as well as on earth,^ and he officiated in that capacity in the abode of Vivasvat ^ (heaven or the sun), long before MatariQvan (another symbol of the lightning) had brought him down to mortals,^ and before Atharvan and the Angiras, the primitive sacrificers, had installed 1 Rig- Veda, x. ?,2>, 6, 11. x. 46, 2 ; i. 58, 6 ; iii. 2, 3 ; x. ^S,, 2 Rig-Veda, x. 45, i ; 121, 7 ; vi. lO ; 184, 3. 8, 2 ; ix. 113, 7, 8. 5 Rig. Veda, i. 24, 2 ; iii. i, 20; =* Rig- Veda, x. 5, I ; iii. 29 ; i. 6S,, x. 88', 8 ; 121, 7, 8 ; iv. i. 11-18. 2; X. 79, 4, &c. Being born thus ^ Rig- Veda, i. 94, 6; x. no, 11 ; every day, he is called the youngest 150. of the gods. 7 Rig. Veda, i. 58, I ; 31, 3. ^ Rig- Veda, ii. 35 ; iii. i ; ii. 4, 2; ^ Rig.Veda,i.93,6 ; iii. 9, 5; vi. 8, 4. lo THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. liim here below as the protector, the guest, and the friend of men.^ The later legends, in which the birth of the lightning, or the first generation of the sacred fire, is directly represented as a sacrifice, are in this respect only the legitimate development of these old conceptions. As lord and generator of sacrifice, Agni becomes the bearer of all those mystic speculations of which sacrifice is the subject. He begets the gods, organises the world, produces and preserves universal life, and is, in a word, a power in the Vedic cosmogony.^ At the same time, as observation, doubtless, contributed to suggest, he is a sort of anirna mundi, a subtle principle pervading all nature ; it is he who renders the womb of women capable of conception, and makes the plants and all the seeds of the earth spring up and grow.^ But at the core of all these high powers ascribed to him, he never ceases for an instant to be the fire, the material flame which consumes the wood on the altar ; and of the many hymns which celebrate his praises, there is not one in which tliis side of his nature is for once forgotten. Soma is in this respect the exact counterpart of Agni. Soma is properly the fermented drinkable juice of a plant so named, which has been extracted from its stalk under pressure after due maceration. The beverage produced is intoxicating,* and it is offered in libation to the gods, especially to Indra, whose strength it intensifies in the battle which that god maintains against the demons. But it is not only on earth that the soma flows ; it is pre- sent in the rain w^hich the cloud distils, and it is shed ^ Rig-Veila, i. 83, 4, 5 ;7I, 2, 3 ;vi. x. 21, 8 ; 80, I ; 183, 3. In the 15, 17 ; 16, 13 ; X. 92, 10 ; vii. 5, 6; Atharva-Veda he is identified with ii. I, 9 ; 2. 3, 8 ; 4, 3-4; x. 7, 3 ; 91, Kama, Desire, Love ; Ath.-Veda, iii. 1,2. He is called himself Angiras, 21,4. In the ritual he bears the sur- the first of the Angiras. names of Patuivat, of Kama, of Put- 2 Rig- Veda, v. 3, I ; x.8, 4: i. 69, 1, ravat : Taitt. Samh., i. 4, 27 ; ii. 2, See Taitt. Samh., i. 5, 10, 2 ; Rig- 3, l ; ii. 2, 4, 4 ; see vi. 5, 8, 4. Veda, vi. 7, 7 ;' 8, 3 ; x. 156, 4- . ^ Rig- Veda, viii. 48, 5, 6 ; x. 119 ; ^ Rig-Veda, iii. 3, 10 ; x. 51, 3 : i. viii. 2, 12. 66, 8 ; iii. 26, 9 ; 27,9 ; viii. 44, 16; THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. ii beyond the visible world wherever sacrifice is performed.^ This is as much as to say that, like Agni, Soma, besides the existence he assumes on the earth and in the atmos- phere, has a mystic existence.^ Like Agni, he has many dwelling-places;^ but his supreme residence is in the depths of the third heaven, where Surya, the daughter of the Sun, passed him through her filter, where the women of Trita, a duplicate, or at any rate a very near relation, of Agni, pounded him under the stone, where Pushan, the god of nourishment, found him.^ From this spot it was that the falcon, a symbol of the lightning, or Agni him- self, once ravished him out of the hands of the heavenly archer, the Gandharva, his guardian, and brought him to men.^ The gods drank of him and became in consequence immortal ; men will become so when they in turn shall drink of him with Yama in the abode of the blessed.^ Meanwhile, he gives to them here below vigour and ful- ness of days ; he is the ambrosia and the water of youth ; it is he who renders the waters fertile, who nourishes the plants, of which he is the king, infusing into them their healing virtues, who quickens the semen of men and animals, and gives inspiration to the poet and fervour to prayer.^ He generated the heaven and the earth, Indra and Vishnu. With Agni, with whom he forms a pair in closest union, he kindled the sun and the stars.^ None the less is he the plant which the acolyte pounds under the stone, and the yellow liquid which trickles into the vat.^ 1 In the view of the Vedas, sacri- i. 23, 19, 20 ; is. 60, 4, 85, 39 ; 95, fice is offered by the gods as well as 2 ; 96, 6 ; 88, 3. by men ; it is universal and eternal. ^ Rig-Veda, ix. 96, 5 ; S6, lo; Sj, " Rig- Veda, i. 91, 4; ix. 36, 15. 2 ; i. 93, 5. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 91, 5. ^ A, Kuhn has gone minutely * Rig- Veda, ix. 32, 2 ; 38, 2 ; I, into the ramifications of the leading 6 ; 113, 3 ; i. 23, 13, 14. myths that refer to Agni and Soma ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 26, 6, 7 ; 27 ; 18, in his Memoir, Die Herabkunft des 13 ; viii. 82, 9 ; i. 71, 5 ; ix. S;^, 4. Feuers und des Gottercrauks, 1859. ^ Rig-Veda, viii. 48, 3 ; ix. 113, 7- For the symbolism of which these II ; viii. 48, 7; 79, 2, 3,6; i. 91, 6,7. two gods are the subject, and for all ^ Rig- Veda, ix. 8, 8 ; viii. 79, 2, that religion of sacrifice of which 6 ; i. 91, 22 ; x. 97, 22 ; vi. 47, 3 ; they are iu some degree the centre, 12 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. In the other divinities the physical character is more effaced. Occasionally it is preserved only in the myth or in a limited number of attributes ; and even in that case it is not always easy to determine it with precision. For the religious consciousness they are personal deities ; and in general the greater the deity is the more pronounced and complex is the personality. Indra, he who of all these is invoked most frequently, is the king of heaven and the national god of the Aryans ;i he gives victory to his people, and is always ready to take in hand the cause of his ser- vants. But it is in heaven, in the atmosphere, that he fights his great battles for the deliverance of the waters, the cows, the spouses of the gods, kept captive by the demons. It is here that, intoxicated with the soma, he strikes down with his thunderbolt Vritra, the coverer, Ahi, the dragon, ^ushna, the witherer, and a crowd of other monsters ; that he breaks open the brazen strongholds of ^ambara, the demon with the club, and the cave of Yala, the concealer of stolen goods ; and that, guided by Sarama, his faithful dog, and roused to fury by the song of the Angiras, he comes to snatch from the cunning Panis what they have pilfered.^ In these combats, which are now represented as exploits of a remote past, and again as a perennial struggle which is renewed every day, he is some- times assisted by other gods, such as Soma, Agni, his companion Vishnu, or his bodyguards the Maruts.^ But he more frequently fights alone ; * and, indeed, he has no need of assistance from others, so vast is his strength and so certain his victory.^ Once only is he said to have been see especially the work of A. Ber- io8. For the basis of these myths gaigne already cited, La Eeligion and the expression given to them iu Vedique d'apres les Hymnes, and the other mythologies, see the me- the paper of the same author, Les moir of M. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, Figures de Rhetorique dans le Rig- EtudedeMythologieComparee, 1863. Yeda, in Memoires de la Societe de ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 28, \ ; ix. 61, 22 ; Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. 96. iii. 12, 6 ; i. 22, 19 ; iv. 18, II ; viii. 1 Rig- Veda, i. 51, 8; 130, 8 ; ii. lOO, 12; iii. 47, &c. II, I'S ; iv, 26, 2 ; viii. 92, 32, &c. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 165, 8 ; vii. 21, 6 ; ■^ Of the countless passages which x. 138, 6, &c. refer to these struggles we shall ^ Rig- Veda, i. 165, 9, lO. mention only Rig- Veda, i. 32 and x. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 13 seized with terror, and that was after the death of Vritra, " when, like a scared falcon, he fled to the depths of space across and beyond the ninety and nine rivers ; " ^ while even in this flight the later literature, wliich has preserved the memory of it, sees only an effect of remorse.^ The fact is, that in India the struggle between the god and the demon is, and will always remain, an unequal one ; it will give rise to an infinite number of myths ; but this will not, as in Persia, issue in dualism. Indra, then, is pre- eminently a warlike god. Standing erect in his war-chariot, drawn by two fawn-coloured horses, he is in some sort the ideal type of an Aryan chieftain. But that is only one of the sides of his nature. As a god of heaven he is also the dispenser of all good gifts, the author and preserver of all life ; ^ with the same hand he fills the udder of the cow with ready-made milk, and holds back the wheels of the sun on the downward slope of the firmament ; he traces for the rivers their courses, and establishes securely without rafters the vault of the sky.* He is of inordinate dimen- sions; there is room for the earth in the hollow of his hand ; ^ he is sovereign lord and demiurgos.^ Around him those divinities are grouped which seem to share in his empire, from the first, his faithful companions the Maruts, probably the bright ones, gods of storm and the lightnings.'^ When their host begins to move, the earth trembles under their deer-yoked chariots and the forests bow their heads on the mountains.^ As they pass, men see 1 Rig- Veda, i. 32, 14. ^ The remorse of the brahmanicide, for the antagonist of Indra has be- come a Brahman : Mahabhar., V. 228- 569. The basis of this story is, how- ever, of ancient date, Taitt. Samh., ii. 5, I ; ii. 5, 3 ; see vi. 5, 5, 2. Taitt. Samh., ii. 4, 12, Indra does '' Twelve hymns of the first book not kill Vritra, but concludes a com- addressed to the Maruts form the pact with him. first volume (all that has appeared) of ^ Rig-Veda, iv. 17, 17; vii. 37,3 : the translation by Max Miiller. He is the Maghavau, the munificent ^ Rig-Veda, v. 60, 2, 3 ; viii. 20, ^ar excellence. 5, 6 ; i. 37, 6, 8. 4 Rig- Veda, i. 61,9; iii. 30, 14; iv. 28, 2 ; ii. 15, 2, 3. ^ Rig-Veda, i. 100, 15 ; 173, 6; vi. 30, I ; iii. 30, 5. s Rig- Veda, ii. 12; i. loi, 5 ; ; iv. 19, 2 ; iii. 46, 2 ; ii. 15, 2 ; 17, 5; vi. 30, 5 ; viii. 96, 6. 14 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. the flashing of their arms and hear the sound of their flute-music and songs, with their challenge calls and the cracking of their whips.^ Tumultuous though they are, they are none the less beneficent. They are dispensers of the rains, and from the udder of Prigni, the spotted cow, their mother, they cause her milk to flow in the showers.^ From their father, Eudra, they inherit the knowledge of remedies.^ This last, whose name probably meant '' the reddish one," before it was interpreted to mean "The Howler," is, like his sons, a god of storm. In the Hymns, which certainly do not tell us everything here any more than elsewhere, he has nothing of that gloomy aspect under which we find him become so famous afterwards. Although he is armed with the thunderbolt, and is the author of sudden deaths,* he is represented as pre-emi- nently helpful and beneficent. He is the handsomest of the gods, with his fair locks. Like Soma, the most excel- lent remedies are at his disposal, and his special office is that of protector of flocks.^ He is a near relation of Vdyu or Vdta, the wind, with whom he is sometimes confounded,^ a god of healing like him, and owner of a miraculous cow which yields him the best milk.'^ He is also similarly re- lated to Parjanya, the most direct impersonation of the rain-storm, the god with the resounding hymn, who lays the forests low and causes the earth to tremble, who terrifies even the innocent when he smites the guilty, but who also diffuses life, and at whose approach exhausted vege- tation begins to revive. The earth decks herself afresh when he empties his great shower- bottle ; he is her husband, and it is through him that plants, animals, and men are capable of reproduction ; and, as may always be 1 Rig- Veda, i. 64, 4 ; viii. 20, 1 1 ; 5 Rig. Veda, ii, 33, 3, 4 ; i. 43, 4 ; i. 85, 2, 10; 37, 3, 13. 114, 5 ; ii. 33, 2 ; vi. 74; i. 43 j 2 Rig- Veda, i. 37, 10, ii ; 38, 7, 1 14, 8; x. 169. 9; 64, 6 ; V. 53, 6-10 ; ii. 34, 10. ^ Rig- Veda, x. 169. He is, like 2 Rig- Veda, i. 38,2; ii. 34, 2; him, father of the Maruts: i. 134, viii. 20, 23-26 ; ii. 33, 13. 4 ; 135, 9. •* Rig- Veda, ii. 33, 3, 10-14; vii. '' Rig- Veda, x. 186; i. 134, 4. 46. * . ' THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 15 predicated of a god of storm, who has at his command both Agni and Soma under the forms of lightning and rain, he has a higher ro/c and plays a part in the generation of the cosmos.^ By one of those peculiarities characteristic of the Vedic religions, nearly all the features which have just been men- tioned as conspicuous in Agni, Soma, and Indra reappear in another divine personage of an origin apparently very dif- ferent, Brihaspati or Bralimanaspati, as he is called, the lord of prayer. Like Agni and Soma, he is born on the altar, and thence rises upwards to the gods ; like them, he was begotten in space by heaven and earth ; like Indra, he wages war with enemies on the earth and demons in the air ; ^ like all three, he resides in the highest heaven, he generates the gods, and ordains the order of the universe. Under his fiery breath the world was melted and assumed the form it has, like metal in the mould of the founder.^ At first sight it would seem that all this is a late product of abstract reflection ; and it is probable, in fact, from the very form of the name, that in so far as it is a distinct person, the type is comparatively modern ; in any case, it is peculiarly Indian ; but by its elements it is connected with the most ancient conceptions. As there is a power in the flame and the libation, so there is in the formula; and this formula the priest is not the only person to pro- nounce, any more than he is the only one to kindle Agni or shed Soma. There is a prayer in the thunder, and the gods, who know all things, are not ignorant of the power in the sacramental expressions. They possess all-potent spells that have remained hidden from men and are as ancient as the first rites, and it was by these the world was formed at first, and by which it is preserved up to the present.^ It is this omnipresent power of prayer which ^ Rig- Veda, v. 83 ; vii. loi ; ix. ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 50, 4 ; ii. 26, 3 ; 82,^ 3 ; 113, 3. 24, 5; iv. 50, i ; x. 72, 2. - Rig- Veda, ii. 24, II ; vii. 97, 8 ; ^ Rig- Veda, i. 164, 45; viii. lOO, 10, ii. 23, 3, iS; ii. 24, 2-4; x. 68. ii; x. 71, i; I77>2; 114, i; '-^^-2^, 17 ; 1 6 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. Bralimanaspati personifies, and it is not without reason that he is sometimes confounded with Agni, and especially with Indra. In reality each separate god and the priest him- - selfi become Brahmanaspati at the moment when they pronounce the mantras which give them power over the things of heaven and of earth. The same idea, in a more abstract form, comes out in Yac, the sacred speech, which is represented as an infinite power, as superior to the gods, and as generative of all that exists.^ If we combine into one all the attributes of sovereign power and majesty which we find in the other gods, we will have the god Varttna} As is implied in the name, which is the same as the Greek Ovpavo^, Yaruna is the god of the vast luminous heavens, viewed as embracing all things, and as the primary source of all life and every blessing.* Indra, too, is a god of the heavens, and these two personalities do, in fact, coincide in many respects. There is, however, this difference between them, that Indra has, above all, appropriated the active, and, so to speak, militant life of heaven, while Yaruna represents rather its serene, immutable majesty. Nothing equals the magni- ficent terms in which the Hymns describe him. The sun is his eye, the sky is his garment, and the storm is his breath.^ It is he who keeps the heavens and the earth apart, and has established them on foundations that cannot be shaken; who has placed the stars in the firmament, who has given feet to the sun, and who has traced for the X. II, 4; go, 9. Prayer is the weapon in the work of J. Darmesteter, of Brihaspati, ii. 24, 3, &c. ; it is also Ormazd et Ahriman, leurs Origines that of the Angiras. The brahman, et leur Histoire, 1877. See also the effective word, is devakrita, the the interesting monograph by A. work of the gods, vii. 97, 3 ; compare Hillebrandt, Yaruna und Mitra, ein the bellowing of Agni, of Varuna, of Beitrag zur Exegese des Veda, 1877, the celestial bull, the song of' Par- and R. Roth, Die hochsten Gotter des jauya and that of the Maruts. arischen Volke.s, ap. Zeitschr. der 1 Rig- Veda, iv. 50, 7. Deutsch. Morgenland. Gesellsch., t. 2 Rig- Veda, x. 125. vi. 70, 3 The myth of Varuna and the ^ Rig- Veda, vii. 87, 5 ; viii. 41, 3. whole of the conceptions which are ^ Rig- Veda, i. 115, i; 25, 13; Ath.- connected with it are the subject of Veda, xiii. 3, I ; Rig-Veda, vii. 87, 2. a study, as profound as brilliant, THE VEDIC RELIGIONS. 17 auroras their paths, and for the rivers their courses.^ He has made everything and preserves everything; nothing can do harm to the works of Varuna. No one can fatliom him ; but as for him, he knows all and sees all, both what is and what shall be.^ From the heights of heaven, where he resides in a palace with a thousand gates, he can dis- cern the track of the birds through the air and of the ships over the seas.^ It is from thence, from the height of his throne of gold on its foundations of brass, that he watches over the execution of his decrees, that he directs the onward movement of the world, and that, surrounded by his emissaries, he regards with an eye that never slumbers the doings of men, and passes judgment upon them.* For he is before all the upholder of order in the universe and in human society, and his sovereignty is the highest expression of law, both physical and moral.^ He inflicts terrible punishments and avenging maladies on the hardened criminal;^ but his justice discriminates between a fault and a sin, and he is merciful to the man that repents. It is also to him that the cry of anguish from remorse ascends, and it is before him that the sinner comes to discharge himself of the burden of his guilt by confession.'^ In other sections the religion of the Veda is ritualistic, and at times intensely speculative, but with Varuna it goes down into the depths of the conscience, and realises the idea of holiness. It has sometimes been maintained that the Varuna of the Hymns is a god in a state of decadence.^ In this view 1 Rig-Veda, vii. 86, I ; viii. 41, 10; ^ These are his bonds: Rig- Veda, 42, I ; i. 24, 8; V. 85, 5 ; i. 123, 8; i. 24, 15, &c. There is often men- ii. 28, 4; V. 85, 6 ; vii. Sj, I. tiou of his wrath : i. 24, II, 14; ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 42,3; i. 24, lo ; vii. 62, 4; iv. i, 4; vii. 84, 2. 25, 14. Dropsy, iu particular, was an iuflic- '^ Rig- Veda, i. 25, 10 ; viii. 88, 5 ; tion especially ascribed to Varuna : i. 25, 7-1 1. vii. 89; Atliarva-Veda, iv. 16, 7. •* Rig-Veda, v. 62, 8 ; i. 25, 13 ; ix. '^ Rig- Veda, i. 25, I, 2; ii. 28,5-9 ; 73,4;vii.49,3; Ath.-Veda,iv. 16, 1-5. v. 85,' 7, 8; vii. 86 ; Sj, 7 ; 88, 6 ; 89. ^ Hence his surnames of ritasya ^ See the arguments for this in gopa, the guardian of order, dhri- J. Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, tavrata, satyalliarman, whose de- t. v, p. 116; see also i^illebraudt, crees are irreversible and efifectual. Varuna und Mitra, p. 107. B 1 8 THE RELIGIONS OF INDIA. we can by no means concur. That he filled small space in the public cultus at the time when these old chants were collected, is evident indeed from the small number of hymns to Varuna preserved in the collection. Still, though we might insist that the importance of a god is not always to be measured by the frequency with which his name is invoked in the ritual, an appeal to these few hymns is enough to prove that, in the consciousness of their authors, the divinity of Varuna stood still intact. In connection with no other god is the sense of the divine majesty and of the absolute dependence of the creature expressed with the same force, and we must go to the Psalms in order to find similar accents of adoration and supplication. More- over, there are two hymns ^ in which a formal parallel is drawn between Varuna and Indra, the god who ought to have dethroned him, and in both places it is with Varuna on the whole that the supreme majesty remains. There is a third hymn,^ it is true, where matters appear in a different light. In it we find Agni declaring that he quits the service of Varuna for that of Indra, the only true lord and master, and this is looked upon by some as authentic evidence that the worship of Varuna was superseded by that of Indra. This would be a very singular passage indeed, if it actually contained a chapter of religious history, all the more surprising that it bears the marks of such extreme antiquity. But it is not a page of his- tory we must look for here; it is a page of mythology. Heaven is not always in a clement mood, and there was a time when Varuna was not solely just and good, when, alongside of myths representing his divine nature, there Avere others that expressed his demonic character, and in which heaven or Varuna was vanquished. The religious sentiment, in many respects so elevated, which appears in the Hymns, discarded tiie most of the myths of this class, as well as many others which were offensive to it ; but it did not discard them all, and it could not prevent them ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 42; vii. 82. , ^ Rig- Veda, x. 124. THE VEDIC RELIGIONS, 19 surviving in a sort of latent state. In the passage in ques- tion, which is one of those that have passed in spite of the feeling against them, Yaruna is not a god on the wane but a malign divinity ; and that is a side of his nature the memory of which is kept alive in the Brahmanas. Varuna is the first of a group of deities with abstract names, such as Mitra, the friend, Aryaman, the bosom friend, Bhaga, the liberal, Daksha, the capable, Amga, the apportioner, which are only a splitting up and in some sort the reflection of his own being. They have no very defined existence, and, with almost the single excep- tion of Mitra,^ they are never invoked alone. They all, as is noticeable, tend in some degree to maintain the part of solar divinities ; particularly is this the case with Mitra, the most conspicuous among them, and who, like his brother Mithra of the Zend books, becomes identified later on with the sun himself. Savitri also, a decidedly solar god, is often associated with them ; and in one myth of unmistakably ancient date the sun is their brother, being born of an immature Qg