%. •" „*•" .... Heine (prose works). 2 VEDIC INDIA. 2. Another world ; a world in itself. That is what India pre-eminently is, and therein lies the charm. The word has been said and repeated times out of number, yet seldom with a full realization of the literal- ness and extent of its truth. Not even an attentive survey of the map is sufficient to impress it on the mind anything but vaguely. Comparison and a few figures are needed to create a clear and definite perception. Nothing less will convince us that we have to do not with a country, but with a continent, and that we can no more speak of the climate, the people, the language of India, in the singular, than of those of Europe — which it very nearly equals in size. For a line drawn from the mouths of the Indus to those of the Ganges gives the distance between Bayonne (on the Atlantic coast by the Pyrenees) and Constanti- nople ; while another, stretched from the northern- most angle, just where the Indus turns southwards, to Cape Comorin, equals in length that from Arkh- angelsk on the White Sea to Naples. Nor would the latter line take in, by a great deal, the entire length of the Isle of Ceylon, which is itself not very much smaller than Ireland. Were we to include the extreme Northeast (Assam) and the Indian lands east of the mouths of the Ganges and the Indian Ocean — (Burma, Siam, etc.) — we should obtain even more imposing parallels ; but we are not concerned in the present work with more than the great western penin- sula, — nor, strictly speaking, with the whole of that ; since the beginnings of political and social life and the spiritual development in religion and philosophy, that are to be our theme, were perfected almost en- THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 3 tirely within the northern half of it. This at various periods received divers expressive and significant native names, but it is found convenient, in our own time, to gather it under the general appella- tion of Hindustan, roughly bordered in the south by the ViNDHYA MOUNTAINS, a chain of several ridges, which stretches across the continent and divides it into two pretty even halves. All that lies south of the Vindhyas is no less sweepingly designated as Dekhan.' For general purposes this simple division, though somewhat arbitrary, does excellently well. Even after a careful survey of these proportions, it comes home to us with something of a shock when we are told that the population of India (the western peninsula alone) amounted in 1872, on the showing of the census taken that year, to over 250,000,000 (not including Burma), or about one sixth of the entire human race. 3. But extent and numbers do not alone, nor even chiefly, go to produce the imposing impression we associate with the name of India. It is the various features of its physical geography, and especially its mountain scenery, that make of it a vision of glory and majesty. Some countries, like Babylonia and Egypt, are what their rivers make them. India — physically and intellectually — is the creation of her Himalaya. Never was wall of separation more towering, more impassable, raised by nature. Scarcely an opening along the immense extent of this, the most compact and highest range in the world, yields a passage to either the rude winds or ruder peoples * "South Country," corrupted from " Dakshinapati." 4 VEDIC INDIA. - - - of the North. For ages Eran and Turan might roam and fight, and settle and migrate, across and athwart that vast table-land of Central Asia, itself the loftiest terrace on the face of the earth — and all their random waves broke against the stupendous, impervious barrier.' Whatever conquering or civilizing swarms made their way at various times into the land of the Indus, reached it through a few gaps in the lesser chains of the Northwest, the HiNDU-KuSH and the Suleiman Mountains, the passes that became cel- ebrated in history under the names of Khaibar, KURAM, and Bholan. The ruggedness and small number of even these breaks made such occurrences difficult and far between, while the waters which sur- rounded the lower half of the continent, being those of an ocean rather than of inland seas, for many cen- turies served purposes of isolation far more than of intercourse. So the great North beyond the moun- tains remained a region of mystery and awe, from which the oldest native peoples vaguely fancied their ancestors to have come down at some time, so that some of their descendant tribes were wont, even till very lately, to bury their dead with the feet turned northwards, ready for the journey to the old home, where they were to find their final rest. 4. Travellers agree that no mountain scenery — not that of the Alps, nor any in the Caucasus, the Andes, or other famed highlands of the world — is ' The level of this table-land is itself, on a rough average, 10,000 feet above the sea, and the Himalaya vs^all rises 10,000 feet above that, not including such exceptional giants as Mt. Everest, Dhawal- agiri and some others, whose peaks tower up to nearly as many feet more. (Mt. Everest-29,002 ft.) \ f^ ■H l i.i 6 VEDIC INDIA. remotely comparable in splendor and sublimity to what the Himalaya offers in almost any of its valleys. A continuous ridge nearly double the height and five times the length of the Swiss- Italian Alps, with a mountain region depending on it, the size of Spain, Italy, and Greece put together in a row, and of which one small portion, Kash- mir, looking like a nook nestled in the north- west corner, is as large as all Switzerland, — surely such a ridge gives scope to variety of scenery. We arc told that it is not uncommon to stand on some point, from which the eye takes in a semicircular sweep of undulating or jagged snow-line with an iridescent, opal-like glory ever playing along it, and with peaks rising from it at intervals, — " heaven-kissing hills " indeed ! — the least of which is several thousand feet higher than Mont Blanc, like pillars of ice support- ing a dome of a blue so intense as to seem solid ; while at your feet, forest-clothed and cut by valleys, stretch down the lower ridges, which descend, tier below tier, in four great terraces, into the hot plains of Lower Hindustan. If the spectator had taken his station on a summit of the northernmost — and highest — ridge, somewhere on the northwest boundary of Nepal, the grandeur of the physical surroundings would be helped by that of memories and associations. He would there be at the very core and centre of the divine HiMAVAT — to use the fine ancient name, which means " Abode of Winter," — the region to which the Aryan Hindu has, for ages well-nigh untold, looked with longing and rever- ence ; for there, on the fairest and loftiest heights 8 VBDIC INDIA. he knew, he placed the dwellings of his gods. There they were enthroned in serene and unattainable majesty ; there they guarded the hidden storehouses of their choicest gifts to men : for there lay the mysterious caves of KUVERA, the god of wealth, the keeper of gold and silver and other precious ore, and of sparkling gems : there, snow-fed and pure, at a height of about 15,000 feet, slumber the sacred lakes, eternally mirroring in their still waters only the heavens and the mountain wilderness that cradles them ; and there, too, cluster the springs of the great rivers, holiest of things, — the Indus, and the SuTLEj, and the Ganges, and the Brahmaputra with the most glorious name — " Son of God," — that river ever had. To such regions, all wildness and mystery, all peace and silence, but for the rush of torrents and the music of winds and leaves, world- weary men and women, longing for the rest and beauty of passionless, eternal things, have come age after age, and still come, on long pilgrimages, fre- quently stretching into years of self-exile in rude forest-hermitages, to drink deep of solitude and meditation, and return, heart-healed and renovated, to the plains below ; unless — and thrice blessed those to whom this is given, — they can stay among the mountains and woods, as in the vestibule to a higher world, stripped of all earthly clingings, desires and repinings, patiently and happily waiting for the final release. Thus the Himalayas have ever been woven into the deepest spiritual life of the people whose physical destinies they helped to shape. They literally bounded their view in every sense, and what THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. g lay beyond was the great unknown North, where dwelt the UttarA-Kura, the " remotest of men " — whether the spirits of the happy dead or a fabu- lous race enjoying a perpetual golden age of sinless- ness and bliss, cannot be made out with absolute clearness — perhaps both. 5. A review of all the conditions and manifesta- tions of India's physical life were needed to appre- ciate the entire range of the influence exercised by that stupendous chain, which, as it is the main feature of India's geography, is also the main agent of her prosperity. Its eternally renewed, inexhausti- ble treasury of snows is drawn on by the whole of Hindustan through the channels of its noble and numerous rivers, its true wealth-givers, which a thou- sand branching smaller ridges, dwindling down to mere slopes, direct into as many valleys, breaking the mass into a perfect, nicely graded and dis- tributed network. Indeed, the privileged land gets more than its share of the great store ; for some of its largest rivers — the Indus with its companion and later feeder, the Sutlej, and also the Brahmaputra — have their springs and a certain length of course on the northern side of the watershed, thus bringing to their own side much of the rainfall which should by rights go to the far thirstier plains of Tibet and Bokharia. Nor is it only by storing the moisture in its snowdrifts and glaciers, by nursing and feed- ing India's infant rivers, that the Himalaya benefits the land it overshadows and protects: it also secures to it the largest rainfall in the world, as far as measured to this day, and regulates the " rainy 10 VEDIC INDIA. season," without which even such rivers would be insufficient to ensure the productiveness of a soil exposed to torrid heat during most of the year. Shut off from the coohng gales of the north, India depends entirely on that peculiar form of trade- v/inds known as the MONSOONS, or rather on the southwestern monsoon which sets in in June, laden with the accumulated vapors exhaled through many months by the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, and condensed in mid-air into huge solid banks of clouds. These clouds travel with great swiftness northward across the atmosphere or hang over the land obscuring the light of day, according as the violence of the wind rages or abates, until they are dashed against the stony breast of the Himalaya, whose elevation infinitely overtops the region of drifting vapors. Shattered with the shock, they discharge their torrents of rain as would a water- fiUed skin cut open by a rock against which it was hurled. The monsoon, being abruptly stopped as well as the clouds by the double Himalayan wall, besides getting involved in the countless narrow valleys and winding passes of the intricate highlands which lead up to it, combined with the tremendous accumulation of electricity, produces the most ter- rific thunderstorms of the world — and thus the Himalayas detain and confiscate for the exclusive benefit of their privileged land the supply of waters which cannot sail over their lofty heads, and for want of which the great Central Tableland is doomed to thirst and comparative barrenness. The consequence is that the average yearly rainfalls 3. — TAMBUR RIVER AT LOWEST LIMIT OF FIRS (HIMALAYA). 12 VEDIC INDIA. recorded for Hindustan, according to the most ex- act scientific calculations, give well-nigh incredible figures : 125 inches in that part of the Penjab high- lands which faces the southwest and is exposed to the full force of the monsoon ; 220 inches in similarly situated parts of Bengal ; while Assam, raised on a higher tier of the Himalayan platforms, and backed more closely by the main ridge, claims the honor of owning the largest rainfall in the whole world : 481 inches.* Even this tremendous figure is surpassed in exceptional years ; indeed it was all but doubled in the year 1861, for which 805 inches were shown, 366 inches having fallen in the single month of July. But this, again, is a visitation nothing short of a public calamity, as disastrous in its way as the oppo- site extreme. 6. It would seem that failing crops and dearth should be evils unknown in a country blessed with rivers so many and so noble, and so bountiful a sky. Unfortunately, the contrary is frequently the case, owing to the extremely uneven distribution of the rainfall, excessive in places and insufficient in others. Meteorological observations are carried on at 435 stations in British India. With such a number the distances between the stations cannot be very great ; yet the figures returned vary as much as though they belonged to different climes. Thus in Penjab, not a very extensive province, the average fall dwin- ' At the station of Cherra-Poonjee. All the figures and scientific data which, it is hoped, will lend this chapter an authority beyond that of a mere general description, are taken from that mine of pre- cise knowledge, W. W. Hunter's hidiatt Empire — Its People^ His- tory, and Products (second edition, 1886). THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 1 3 dies from 125 inches to 7 and even 5, at the stations along the Indus, because they are protected by the Suleiman range, which breaks the force and direction of the monsoon, being attacked by it not in front, but sideways, and, so to speak, indirectly. The same causes — i.e., the disposition of the various mountain ridges and spurs — interferes with the even distribution of rain all over Dekhan no less than Hindustan. Thus it is that the same year not infrequently brings both floods and drought, crops and whole villages being swept away in one province, while in another noth- ing has come up at all, with the uniform result — famine and frightful mortality — not to speak of such seasons when the southwestern monsoon itself, for some unknown reason, totally fails at the appointed time, or comes along feeble and unsteady. And as everything in India seems to affect an extravagant scale, so a year of famine, even local, is attended with horrors well-nigh indescribable, for with a population so dense, and, as a rule, so poor and improvident, the ravages of actual starvation are doubled by its attendant diseases, and deaths are numbered by hundreds of thousands. With truly Oriental resignation and apathy, the people look to the Government for relief, and, when the calamity gets beyond the possibility of help, die without a word, as they stand, or sit, or lie. The annals of India from the time it came under British rule show a string of famines, separated by intervals of no more than from three to eight years, seldom ten, and lasting quite frequently over a year, even as long as three years. Some are limited to particu- 14 VEDIC INDIA. lar provinces, but only too many are recorded as general. 7. Of these, the most widely spread and most prolonged that India ever experienced,, was that of 1876-78. The southwest monsoon failed in 1875, and again in 1876; and in this latter year the north- east monsoon, — ^which sets in in October, and is at best a poor resource, coming, as it does, not across an ocean but an inland waste, and being, moreover, intercepted by the Himalaya, — proved even less efilicient than usual. The main crops had perished in the drought of 1875, and this disappointment fin- ished the rest. Nor did the summer of 1877 bring relief, for the southwest monsoon failed for the third time, and though the autumn monsoon, for a wonder, did arrive laden with some goodly showers, the curse^ was not removed from the land until a normal rainfall once more visited it in June, 1878. All these years the people died — of starvation, of cholera, of hunger-fevers ; mortality rose to forty per cent, above the usual rates, and as the number of births greatly diminished at the same time, and the normal proportions were not restored until 1880, the total of the population was found in this year to have actually decreased during the last four years, instead of increasing at a moderate but steady rate, as is the case wherever the normal law of life-statis- tics is undisturbed and the number of births exceeds that of deaths. To give one palpable illustration of the ghastly phenomenon, we will borrow the record for the single province of Madras from a contem- porary work of the highest authority and reliability ' : ' W. W, Hunter's, The Indian Empire, etc. THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 1 5 " In 1876, when famine, with its companion, cholera, was already beginning to be felt, the births registered in Madras numbered 632,113, and the deaths 680,381. In 1877, the year of famine, the births fell to 477,447, while the deaths rose to 1,556,312. In 1878 the results of the famine showed themselves by a still further reduc- tion of the births to 348,346, and by the still high number of 810,921 deaths. In 1879 the births recovered to 476,307, still below the average, and the deaths diminished to 548,158. These figures are only approximate, but they serve to show how long the results of famine are to be traced in the vital statistics of a people." To complete this appalling picture, it may be mentioned that the Briti.sh Government spent, in famine relief, during the three tragic years, 1876-78, 11,000,000 pounds sterling = 55,000,000 dollars, in actual cash out of pocket, not including the negative expense in loss of revenue. In September, 1877, 2,600,000 persons were supported by the Govern- ment in Madras alone ; of these, a few over 600,000 were nominally employed on works, and nearly two millions were gratuitously fed. It is asserted that this last tremendous visitation has been a lesson to the British Government that will not fail to bear beneficent fruits, in the shape of more numerous and better means of communication, an increase in the acreage under cultivation, for which there is, fortu- nately, still a large margin, and various lesser local measures,^ — a combination which is to make up for the unequal distribution of the rainfall by a prompter and more even exchange and distribution of the earth's products between the different provinces. 8. The Himalayas, with their immense sweep and elevation — reaching, in the higher edges, an average of 19,000 feet, a height equal to the lower half of the atmosphere, are apt to monopolize one's powers 1 6 VEDIC INDIA. of attention, and to fire the imagination to the ex- clusion of the many other chains of mountains that cut up the Indian continent into numerous larger and smaller divisions. Yet some of them are very con- siderable, and, on a lesser scale, influence the climate and conditions of life of their respective regions much in the same way that the giant-ridge of the north does those of the entire continent. After the fourth and lowest of the Himalayan terraces has sloped down into the low, hot riverland which, with only a slight swelling to serve as watershed between the systems of the Indus and the Ganges, stretches across from sea to sea, from the mouth of on.e of these royal rivers to that of the other, forming a wide belt of plain, the ground slopes up again, southward, into the ViNDHYA range, which, broken up into a num- ber of confused chains and spurs, interposes its broad wild mountain belt between the more properly continental Hindustan and the tapering, peninsular Dekhan. Although of a more — or rather less — than moderate elevation (averaging from 1500 to 4000 feet, with no peak to surpass or even equal the 5650 feet of Mt. Abu at its western end), this intricate system of " hills," with its exuberant growth of for- est and jungle, was very difficult of access until pierced with roads and railways by European engineering, forming almost as effective a barrier between the northern and southern halves of the continent, as the Himalayas themselves between the whole of India and the rest of the world, and during long ages kept the two separate in race, language, .and culture. 1 8 VEDIC INDIA. 9. A bird's-eye view, embracing the whole of Dek- han, would show it to be a roughly outlined triangu- lar table-land, raised from one to three thousand feet above the sea on three massive buttresses of which the broad Vindhya ridge is one, covering the base of the reversed triangle, while the sides are represented by two chains of unequal height, respectively named Western and Eastern Ghats. This name, mean- ing " landing stairs," is particularly appropriate to the western chain, which rises in serrated and pre- cipitous rocky steeps almost from the very sea, only in places receding from the shore sufificiently to leave a narrow strip of cultivable and habitable land. On such a strip the wealthy and magnificent city of Bombay is built, very much like the Phoenician cities of yore, the Ghats stretching their protecting wall behind them just as the Lebanon did behind Tyre and Sidon, the sea-queens of Canaan. Like the Lebanon, too, they slope inland, directing the course of all the rivers of Dekhan from west to east. In scenery they are much sterner and grander than the Vindhya range, which they, moreover, surpass in elevation, their average height being uniformly about 3000 feet along the coast, with abrupt peaks reaching 4700 feet, and nearly the double of that in the considerably upheaved southern angle of the peninsula, where they form a sort of knot, joining the southern extremity of the Eastern Ghats. This latter range is really not a continuous mountain chain at all, but rather a series of inconsiderable spurs and hills, interrupted at frequent intervals by broad gaps, through which the rivers, fed by the mi: ^^ ^t'V^ 20 VEDIC INDIA. drainage of the Western Ghats, flow easily and peaceably to the sea, known, all too modestly con- sidering its size, as the Bay of Bengal. lO. There was a time when the whole of Southern India or Dekhan was " buried under forests " ; such is the description in which all ancient poets agreCo It would be vastly exaggerated in the present day, for fire and the axe of the husbandman, the timber cutter, the charcoal burner, have been at work un- checked through some thirty centuries and have revelled in wanton destruction after operating the necessary clearing. The most ruthless and formida- ble foes of the old virgin forests are the nomadic tribes, chips of the ancient aboriginal stock, which have escaped the influences of the Aryan immigra- tion and conquest, and lead even now, in their mountain fastnesses, the same more than half savage existence which was theirs when the first Aryan set- tlers descended into the valleys of the Indus. These tribes have a habit of stopping every year in their perpetual wanderings and camping just long enough to raise a crop of rice, cotton, or millet, or all three, in any spot of their native primeval forest where the proper season may find them. They go to work after a rude and reckless fashion which sets before us the most primitive form of agriculture followed by the human race at the very dawn of invention. First of all they burn down a patch of forest, regardless of the size and age of its most venerable giants, and as they do not care for the extent of the damage, and certainly do not attempt to limit the action of the fire, it usually runs wild and devours many square THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 21 miles in addition to the clearing actually wanted for cultivation. Then comes the breaking up of the soil thus summarily reclaimed, for which purpose almost any implement seems good enough. It is only a few tribes that know the use of a rough sort of antedilu- vian plough. Most of them content themselves with a bill-hook, a spade, or a hoe pick ; nay, a common stick sometimes is sufficient to scratch the surface of the soil with — which is all that is needed ; the seed is then laid in the shallow furrow, sometimes covered up and sometimes not, and the tillers sit down confi- dently to await results. Now a rich virgin soil, fer- tilized with fresh ashes, has quite enough of such treatment and a tropical rainfall to yield a return from thirty- to fifty-fold. Not infrequently several crops are raised simultaneously and on the same patch, by the simple process of throwing rice, Indian corn, millet, oil seeds, and cotton into the ground together, and gathering the crops successively as each ripens in its own season. No wonder that the nomads prefer such easy and remunerative culture to the laborious routine of regular farm work on partially exhausted soil. They do sometimes at- tempt to get a crop off the same clearing two or even three years in succession, but these experiments seem only to confirm them in their own easier and more attractive method. II. It is only of late years that these lawless pro- ceedings have encountered some resistance. It is a fact scientifically established that the wholesale de- struction of forests is attended by baleful results to the country where it takes place, the worst of 22 VEDIC INDIA. which are a perceptible change of climate and de- crease in the average of the rainfall. The under- ground moisture attracted by the roots which it feeds, being deprived of the protecting shade, dries up and evaporates ; the air necessarily becomes drier, and colder or hotter, according to the latitude, from exposure to the severe northern blasts or the scorching southern sun, while, the large mass of moist emanations which a forest contributes towards the formation of clouds being cut off, the denuded district no longer supplies its own rain, but entirely depends on passing clouds and storms. These re- sults would be particularly fatal in tropical India, living under continual dread of droughts, not to speak of the immediate pecuniary loss represented by the annual destruction of thousands of gigantic valuable timber-trees. This loss is greatly increased when we remember that many tropical trees bring a considerable income without being cut down ; these are the gum-trees, with their rich yield of caoutchouc, lac, and other gums.' The British Government at last awoke to the absolute necessity of taking vigor- ous measures for the preservation of the forests still in existence and, as far as possible, the gradual re- stocking of those hopelessly thinned or partially destroyed. Twelve million acres of forest land are now " reserved," i. e., managed as state property by ^ Lac is not exactly a gum, although it looks and is counted as one. It is the resinous secretion of an insect, which forms abundant in- crustations around the branches of various trees. But without the trees we should not have the gum ; so it is as much an article of forest wealth as the real vegetable gums. THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 23 special state officers ; in these reservations, which are carefully surveyed, nomadic cultivation and cat- tle-grazing are strictly forbidden, timber-cutting is limited by several regulations, and the exuberant growth of tropical creepers is ruthlessly cut down. Even the " open " forests are subjected to some con- trol, and large patches of forest land have been turned into nurseries, to grow the finest kinds of timber-trees. 12. Fortunately such is the bountiful produc- tiveness of the soil, and so great was the original wealth of forest vegetation, that these measures, although so belated, came in time to save, in spite of the depredations carried on through thousands of years, a mass of timber and woodland such as few spots on earth can match or even emulate. Virgin forests are plentiful even now, and cover vast mountain regions, in the Vindhya belt of highlands, and especially in the wildernesses of the Western Ghats, of which the most conspicuous feature is the lordly teak, unanimously voted " king of forests " and " prince of timber." It is an indigenous variety of oak, which thrives best at a height of from three to four thousand feet, and grows in continuous masses, absorbing the nourishment of the soil so as not to allow any other tree or plant to come up in its domain. The only rival of the teak in size and quality of timber is the pine — or, more correctly, larch of the Western Himalayas, admiringly named " tree of the gods," diva ddru (anglicized into " deodar "). It is even more aspiring than the teak, and does not reach its full grandeur and beauty lower than six thousand 24 VEDTC INDIA. feet above the sea ; but in that elevated region a trunk of from twenty to twenty-five feet in circum- ference is no rarity, and such is the height to which the tree shoots up, that with this thickness of trunk, it gives the impression of slimness. It was as famous in its way as the cedars of Lebanon, and ancient writers tell us that Alexander the Great used it to build his fleet. But the Himalaya has, over the Lebanon, the advantage of being far out of the way of armies and conquests, and therefore still wears its royal forest crown unimpaired, while the Leb- anon stands almost denuded, and only an occasional solitary tree tells of its former glory. 13. But, valuable and majestic as these two forest kings are, they are far eclipsed, both in beauty and dimensions, by a native tree, which may be consid- ered the most characteristic of Indian vegetation. It belongs to the family of fig-trees, to which the soil and climate of India are so congenial that it is repre- sented, in different parts of the continent, by no less than a hundred and five varieties. This particular ! variety, specially known ss ^' Indian fig-tree" {I'iciis ] Indicd), surely may claim to be admired as the paragon not only of its own species, butof all vegeta- tion without exception. It takes so influential and prominent a place in the life, both physical and moral, of India, and is moreover such a marvel of nature, that a description of it is not out of place even in a necessarily brief sketch, and we may as well borrow that given by Lassen in his monumental work*: ' Chr. Lassen's Indische Alter thumskunde^ 2d ed., vol. i., pp. 301 ff. 26 VEDIC INDIA. " The Fictis Indica is probably the most astounding piece of vege- tation on the face of our earth. From one single root it produces a vast green temple of many halls, with cool, shady bowers impervious to the light, and seems created expressly and exclusively for the pur- pose of supplying shelterless primeval humanity with ready-made dwellings. For neither is its wood of much use, nor are its fruits eatable for man, and if it inspires the Hindus and their neighbors with a profound veneration, it is owing to the surpassing marvel of its well-nigh preternatural growth, its indestructible duration and everlasting self-renewal ; to which traits the mysterious gloom of its galleries and avenues adds not a little, yielding a most grateful retreat from the torrid summer heat. The trunk of the tree, at a moderate height from the ground, branches out into several stout limbs which stretch from it horizontally ; from these, slender shoots — the so-called " air-roots" — grow downwards until they reach the ground, where they take root, whereupon they increase in thickness and become strong supports for the mother-limb. The central trunk repeats the branching out process at a greater height, and the second circle of limbs in its turn sends down a number of air-roots which form an outer circle of props or pillars. As the central trunk increases in height, it goes on producing tier upon tier of horizontal limbs, and these add row after row to the outer circle of pillars, not indeed with perfect regularity, but so as to form a grove of leafy halls and verdant galleries multiplying ad inJiniHim. For this evolution is carried on on a gigantic scale. The highest tier of horizontal limbs is said to grow sometimes at an elevation of two hundred feet from the ground, and the whole structure is crowned with the dome of verdure in which the central trunk finally culminates. The leaves, which grow very close together, are iive inches long by three and a half broad, and their fine green color pleasantly contrasts with the small red figs, which, however, are not eaten by men." Such is the tree, more generally known under its popular name of banyan than under the scientific one of Ficus Indica^ * the tree which, together ' This name is supposed to come from the fact that the tree was carried westward by Hindu tradesmen called banyans. This accounts for its being found in places along the Persian Gulf, in parts THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 2/ with the Ganges and the Himalaya, completes the picture of India as evoked in a few apt strokes the poet's fancy (see p. i). To the elephants that wander majestically among its shady walks, and the apes that laugh and gambol in its airy galleries, we must add the noisy parrots and other birds of no less flaming plumage, but softer voice, — and to these numerous and playful denizens the berries or small figs disdained by men yield grateful and sufificient food. It is needless to mention that these trees grow singly, not in forests — since one evidently is in itself if not a forest, at least a grove of consider- able size. How large, indeed, can scarcely be realized without the help of a few figures. Fortunately many have been accurately measured, and several have attained historical celebrity. Thus the central trunk of one handsome banyan-tree near Madras is known to have been twenty-eight feet in diameter, and to have been surrounded by a first circle of twenty-seven secondary trunks, each about eleven feet in diameter, and from thirty to fifty feet in height, and after that by almost innumerable others, of decreasing stoutness. The largest known banyan tree had over thirteen hundred large trunks, and three thousand smaller ones. Armies of six or seven thousand men have frequently been encamped in its bowers, and it was seen afar as a solitary green hillock, until a violent hurricane half destroyed it in 1783. Besides which, being situated on an island in of Arabia (Yemen), and even of Africa, although its native land is emphatically the Indian Continent, where it thrives in all provinces, except the table-land of Dekhan. 28 VEDIC INDIA. the Nerbudda, the river has from time to time carried away large slices of its domain, till it is now 7. — clasping roots of the wightia (in the himalayan forests). reduced to a skeleton of its former glory. What maybe its age, no one can tell. Five hundred years are historically recorded. But these trees may get THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 29 to be thousands of years old for aught we can know or prove. For since each new trunk, after it has become firmly rooted and has reached a certain average of thickness, inherits the parent trunk's capacity of branching out into horizontal limbs which in their turn drop root-tendrils into the ground, and consequently absorb the nourishment of ever new soil, there is practically no reason why the multiplying process should ever stop. It is no wonder that almost every village in Hindustan has a banyan-tree which it holds as sacred as a sanctuary. 14. The companions of Alexander who enthusi- astically admired the banyan-tree and gave it its name of " Indian fig-tree," leave it uncertain whether they included under that name another variety, which has obtained an even greater renown and im- portance from the fact that from the oldest times it has been, as it still is, the sacred tree of Indian religions. This is the Ficus Religiosa, very well known under its pretty native and popular names of Ashvattha and Pippala. It is frequently planted next to a banyan so as to have them mix their foliage and stems, from a superstitious notion that they are of different sex and their growing together is an emblem of marriage. The contrast between the large, massive leaves of the banyan, and the light, brilliant, continually vibrating foliage of the pippala is striking and grateful to the eye. The pippala does not reach the stupendous dimensions that the banyan does, nor are its trunks as numer- ous. But it has a way, wherever a seed is acciden- tally dropped on top of another tree — say a palm 30 VEDIC INDIA. tree — or a building, to sink several fibrous shoots through the air down into the ground, and thus in time, when these shoots have thickened and hard- ened into trunks, to entirely encompass tree or building, turning it into a most picturesque and at first sight puzzling object. Although the ashvattha alone is professedly held sacred, it is a crime to destroy or injure either of the two ; both indifferently shelter in their verdant halls altars and images of gods, as well as the performance of sacrifices and the pious contemplations of holy hermits. Still, where neither banyan nor pippala is familiar, villagers usually pay a certain homage to the largest and oldest tree within their radius, no matterof what kind ; and it is not the native trees alone which thrive and expand under that wonderful sky, but those which India shares with Europe and other moderate climes also attain dimensions unheard of elsewhere. Thus Anquetil Duperron mentions having on one of his tramps through the Dekhan enjoyed a noonday rest under an elm tree which could cover over six hun- dred persons with its shade, and adds : " One often meets in India these trees, under whose shade travel- lers while away the hottest time of the day. They cook there such provisions as they carry with them, and drink the water of the ponds near which these trees are planted ; you see there sellars of fried rice and fruits in a small way, and crowds of men and horses from various parts of the country. 15. The same exuberance confronts us in almost any specimen of India's vegetation. Plants that grow elsewhere and in India also are sure to reach here extraordinary size and to be amazingly produc- tive. Thus the bamboo, so plentiful in China and 32 VEDIC INDIA. other countries of Eastern Asia, attains in India a height of sixty feet, and has such enormous leaves that a herd of elephants can lie concealed in a bam- boo plantation. The banana, which grows wild in parts of India and thrives under the lightest cultiva- tion all over the continent, seems to bear its luscious, nutritious fruits in even greater abundance and to be more prolific of new shoots from the same root than in other apparently as favored climes. When, at the end of the year, the long bearing stalk has been eased of its golden burden and cut down at the ground, some 1 80 new stalks spring up in its stead, and the yearly amount of fruit produced by a plantation of these plants is 133 times that of the same space planted in wheat.* Nor is the bread-fruit tree want- ing in this array of tropical vegetable treasures, and as to palms, no less than forty-two varieties wave their graceful crowns over the bewitching landscapes of both Hindustan and Dekhan, and of these most are a source of wealth even more than ornament. Chief among them of course comes the cocoa-palm, which, with the manifold uses which every part of it, from fruit to root, is made to serve, supplies well- nigh all the necessaries of life to many an island where it is the natives' only resource, while in this thrice blessed land it is only one of a host. In the ' The banana is the same fruit as the pisang of the Isle of Java and the Malayan Islands. It has several local Indian names, but the scientific one, adopted in botany, isAfusa Sapieiiiiim. It is probable that it forms a staple article of the very spare and wholly vegetable diet of Indian pilgrims and hermits, as remarked already by ancient Greek and Latin writers ; whence the name : Musa Sapientum — - " Musa of the Sages." THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 33 interior of the Isle of Ceylon is a forest of cocoa- palms numbering eleven millions of trees, while in Dekhan, along the western coast alone, duty was paid years ago on three millions. When to all these we add cotton, the sugar-cane, and the tea-plant, all three natives of India, besides the imported cinchona (quinine-tree) and all the native gums, spices, and varieties of grains, it really seems as though this chosen land had more than its share of the good things of creation, and it becomes more and more evident that with such a variety of resources it ought not to suffer so dreadfully even from pro- tracted droughts, and that increase of management and improved communications are all that is wanted to put an end forever to such horrors as the famine of 1876-78.' ' This is how Herodotus describes the cotton plant in his chapter on India. " There are trees which grow wild there, the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree-wool." Of this same "tree- wool" (the exact counterpart, by the way, of the German ^' Bau?H- wolle" cotton), they also made paper to write on, as was known to the Greeks of Alexander's time. — The sugar-cane is so much a native of India that we still call its produce by its Sanskrit name, sJiarkara, later sakka7-a, but slightly corrupted in our European languages : Latin saccharum, Slavic sakhar, German zticker, Italian zucchero, Spanish azitcar, French sucre, English sugar — not to mention Arabic sukkar 2ii\A. Persian shakar. Even the word "candy" — originally crystallized, transparent sugar, sucre candi — is only a corruption of the Sanskrit " /^/^(^w^/ia:," a name designating the same article. We find no trace of a time when the art of manufacturing molasses and sugar by boiling down and clarifying the sap was unknown in India, although of course the use of the plant must have begun with chewing and sucking chunks of the cane, as is still done by the natives of the Indian Islands — and by children in tlie Southern American States and South 34 VEDIC INDIA. 1 6. In so necessarily cursory a sketch of India's physical features and products, we are forced to ignore a vast number of valuable items of her vege- table wealth, and may scarcely pause to mention even such important plants as rice and indigo. The immense variety of her vegetation will be inferred from the fact that, besides the distinctly tropical and indigenous plants which have just been briefly touched upon and a great many more, there is scarcely a variety of fruit-tree, timber-tree, food plant, or orna- mental plant that Europe and the temperate regions of Asia can boast, but makes its home in India and thrives there. The cause of such extraordinary exuberance is not far to seek r it lies in the great variety of climates which in India range through the entire scale from hottest tropical to moderately warm and even cold. For latitude ensures uni- formity of climate only if the land be flat and other- wise uniformly conditioned. A mountainous coun- try can enclose many climes, with their respective vegetations, within a small compass, for the average temperature is lowered regularly and perceptibly — America. — That tea should be a native of India, not of China, will probably be a surprise to many ; yet it grows wild in Assam where it sometimes reaches the size of a large tree and which is the real home of the plant, whence it was introduced into China where there is a quaint legend about it : a very studious and philosophical young prince grudged nature the hours of rest, considering them wasted, stolen from his beloved studies and meditations. One night he got into such a rage at his wretched inability to conquer the numb- ness which all his efforts could not prevent from sealing his eyes in sleep, that he cut off his eyelids and threw them on the earth — where they struck roots and grew into the tea-plant, that foe and antidote of the sleepy poppy. THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 35 one degree to an ascent of from 350 to 500 feet — in proportion as the elevation increases ; so that a very high range is divided into many narrow belts or zones, which answer, as to climate and productions, to whole countries of entirely different latitudes. The position of the various mountain walls and ridges, by catching and directing or entirely intercepting this or that wind, and the greater or lesser vicinity of the sea, also contribute to form patches of local climate, and India, being cut up in every direction by innumerable ridges and spurs, ranging from moderate hills to the highest solid chain in the world, abounds in these, so that a complete review of her vegetation would really comprise nearly every- thing that grows on the face of the earth, from the distinctively tropical flora to the oak forests which clothe the first tier of the Himalayan terraces, and the white-barked northern birch, which marks, as with a sparse, uncertain fringe, the extreme limit of mountain vegetation. 17. The same variety, and for the same reasons, marks the animal creation or fauna of the Indian Continent, both wild and domestic. Of the latter some animals appear to be indigenous, for instance the dog, which still roves wild in packs all over the Dekhan and portions of Hindustan. There are, too, some particularly fine breeds of hunting dogs, large powerful animals, which have been a boast of India from very old times, and so valuable as to have fig- ured on lists of tribute and royal presents, almost like elephants. Herodotus tells us of a Persian satrap of Babylon under the Akhsemenian kings who 36 VEDIC INDIA. kept so many of these hounds, that " four large vil- lages of the plain were exennpt from all other charges on condition of finding them in food." It is thought that a very handsome dog, portrayed together with his groom on a terra-cotta tablet found in Babylon may be a specimen of this Indian breed. Such too, no doubt, were the dogs presented to Alexander, which were said to fight lions. Too well known to be more than mentioned is the elephant, the prince of the Indian animal world, as well as the fact that there are two varieties, one native to Africa and the other to India. But to many readers it will be an unfa- miliar and amusing detail of rural economy that throughout the Himalayan highlands the favorite beasts of burden are — sheep and cows! both, how- ever, of a peculiar local breed fitted by nature for the work. The sheep are large and strong, and are driven, loaded with bags, to the marts on the out- skirts of the ranges towards the plains, where in addition to their burden — generally borax — they bring their own wool to market, being shorn of which, they return to their mountain pastures with a load of grain or salt. The cow, on the contrary, is a small variety, the yak, which is also useful in a double capacity, for it is the happy owner of a par- ticularly fine and bushy tail, which is manufactured into a rare and highly prized lace-like texture. It is a serviceable little animal, sure-footed and enduring, which safely conveys even heavy loads up the steep- est paths and through the roughest gorges. It is a comfort to think that this patient servant of man at least is well cared for and does not end her life in the 38 VEDIC INDIA. shambles, the cow being the one sacred animal of India, inviolable in life and limb, and never on any account used not only for food, but even for sacrifice. . Besides, both custom and religion, in accordance with the climate and the abundance of choice and varied vegetable food, have long discouraged the practice of eating meat, and even the sacrifices ceased at an early stage of the country's history to consist of bloody offerings. For this reason, one great object of raising and keeping cattle almost vanishes out of sight in India, and domestic animals are chiefly valued for their milk, their wool, and their services. 1 8. Whenever we think of wild animals in con- nection with India, the tiger first presents himself to our mind. And well he may, for he is the most distinctively national beast, and there is no doubt whatever that Hindustan is his original home, whence he migrated into other parts of Asia, both east and west. Low hot plains, with tangled jungles to hide in, are his realm ; hence it is that the royal tiger of Bengal is the handsomest, fiercest, and altogether the most representative specimen of the race. The lion was once his rival. The ancient poetry of India bears ample witness to the f ict ; indeed it is he, and not his more wily and bloodthirsty cousin, who is called " the king of beasts." Alexander the Great still found lions in Penjab, where he hunted them with the hounds that were presented to him for the pur- pose. But the gradually changing conditions of life, the advance of civilization with the attendant de- struction of the noble forests where he loved to THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 39 range, gradually made existence impossible to him, until now there are only a few lion-families left in one particular forest tract in the peninsula of Gujerat where they are strictly preserved by the Government. Not so the tiger. Nothing repressed him, and though, no doubt, the jungles of Bengal were his first and favorite haunt, he spread west- ward as fast as the lion retreated, for the two never have been known to dwell within hearing or meeting distance of each other. As long as he has plenty of antelopes, deer, and wild hogs to feast upon he is not a very objectionable neighbor ; in fact he is, in such districts, to some extent a protector of the native agriculturist, as all those animals are exceed- ingly destructive to crops. When he is reduced to domestic cattle, his vicinity is of course troublesome and ruinous ; but nothing can express the horror of having " a man-eater " in the district, i. e., a tiger, generally an old one, which has once tasted human flesh and blood, and thenceforth, from a hideous peculiarity of his nature, will not satiate his hunger with any other prey. Tigers at all times, unlike the lion and most beasts of prey, kill more victims than they need for food, and this instinct of sheer killing seems to grow fiercer and fiercer in a man-eater. Without referring to mere sportsmen's reports, which may be suspected of romance and partiality, there are the dry statistic records with such figures as these : 108 persons killed in one place by a single tiger in three years ; an average of about 80 a year destroyed by another in the course of several years ; thirteen villages abandoned and 250 acres of rich 40 VEDIC INDIA. paying land thrown out of cultivation from terror of a third; and a fourth, as lately as 1869, killing 127 people and stopping a public road for many weeks, until an English sportsman killed him. The aggre- gate of these isolated cases sums up tremendously. Thus, for the single year of 1877, we have a total of 819 persons and 16,137 head of cattle killed by tigers, and for 1882—895 persons and 16,517 cattle — which reports seem to establish an appalling average. It is some satisfaction to place to the credit side of the balance, for 1877, 1579 tigers killed by native hunters, and 1726 for 1882, which, however, cost the Government respectively £'^777 and ^4800 in rewards. Yet, incredible as it may appear, the loss of life from tigers and other wild beasts is as nothing compared to that caused by snakes. The serpent tribe is perhaps more numerous in India than in any other country, and the most poisonous varieties seem to have congregated there. The openness of the dwel- lings imperatively demanded by the climate, and the vast numbers of people sleeping in the open air, in groves, forests, gardens, etc. give them chances of which they make but too good use, swarming in the gardens and seeking shelter in the houses during the rainy season. As a consequence, death from snake- bite almost equals an epidemic. In that same year of 1877, 16,777 human victims perished by this means, although i^8ir reward were paid for the destruction of 127,295 snakes, while in 1882, 19,5 19 persons were reported to have been killed by snakes as compared with 2606 by tigers, leopards, wolves, and all other wild beasts together. That year ^1487 were paid in lO. PRIMEVAL FOREST ; MONKEYS SCARED BY A LARGE SNAKE. 42 VEDIC INDIA. rewards for the destruction of 322,421 venomous reptiles. 19. The insect world is not less profusely repre- sented than the other divisions of animated creation, and though it successfully does its best to make life disagreeable to those who have not sufficient wealth to protect themselves by costly and ingenious de- vices, it seems ridiculous to mention the tiny nuis- ance in one breath with the huge standing disaster the country possesses in its tigers and snakes. Be- sides, there are two insects which in almost any land would be considered a sufficient source of income, and which here step in as an incidental and second- ary resource. They are the insect that produces the valuable and inimitable lac-dye, and especially the silk-worm. This latter, like the tea plant, we are apt to hold as originally the exclusive property of China, and imported thence into every country where it is raised. Yet it appears that it is as much an indigenous native of India as of China, like several other products, and, among them, that most vital one — rice. The mulberry tree, of course, is cultivated in connection with the silk industry, but by no means universally, as there are many vari- eties of the worm which content themselves with other plants. That which feeds on the leaves of the ashvattha {Fie us Religiosa) is called deva (divine), on account of the sacredness of the tree, and very highly prized — nor altogether on superstitious grounds, for the thread it spins is said to be quite equal, if not superior, to that of the mulberry worm, both in glossy beauty and flexible strength ; perhaps 44 VEDIC INDIA. this may be the effect of a gum-like substance con- tained in the sap of both this tree and the banyan, and which in both frequently exudes from the bark, thickens into a kind of caoutchouc, and is gathered for sale and use. 20. Even so brief and cursory a review of India's physical traits and resources would be incomplete without some mention of the mineral wealth which, for ages, has been pre-eminently associated with the name. To say "India" was to evoke visions of gold, diamonds, pearls, and all manner of precious stones. These visions, to be just, were made more than plausible by the samples which reached the west from time to time in the form of treasures of untold variety and value, either in the regular ways of trade, from the Phoenicians down, or by that shorter road of wholesale robbery which men call conquest ; and indeed, but for the glamour of such visions and the covetousness they bred, India might not have seen most of the nations of Europe fight for a place on her soil, from a mere foothold to whole realms, and might have remained free from invasion and foreign rule. Yet, strangely enough, it now turns out that her chief and real mineral worth lies not so much in the gold and precious stones whose glitter fascinated the nations far and near, as in the less showy but far more permanently useful and inexhaustible minerals and ores: the coal fields which underlie most of central Dekhan ; the natural petroleum wells of Penjab, Assam, and Burma ; the salt which both sea and inland salt lakes yield abundantly by evaporation, and which in THE WONDERLAND OF THE EAST. 45 the northeast of Penjab is quarried like any stone from a range of solid salt cliffs, unrivalled for purity and extent ; the saltpetre which covers immense sur- faces of the soil in the upper valleys of the Ganges ; the iron which is found in almost all parts of the continent ; the rich copper mines of the lower Hima- layas, — not to speak of various quarries — building stone, marble, slate, etc. As for gold, although India has always distinctly ranked as a gold-pro- ducing country, and many of her rivers have been known from oldest times to carry gold, and gold- washing has always been going on in a small way here and there and everywhere, so that the metal probably exists in many places, and very possibly in large quantities, yet the industry of gold-seeking does not appear to thrive ; it is carried on in a desul- tory, unbusinesslike manner which yields but meagre returns. Silver is no longer found anywhere in the country, and the famed diamonds of Golconda are nothing nowadays but a legendary name, nor are other gems, with the exception, perhaps, of car- nelian, onyx, agate, and lapis lazuli, found in much greater abundance ; either the deposits are ex- hausted, or, more probably, the enormous quantities which came out of the country in the way of pres- ents, trade, and conquest, and those which still partly fill the treasuries of native princes and temples, were due to accumulation through the many, many cen- turies of India's seclusion, before the land became known and open to other nations. 2 1 . But all and more than the visionary legends of fantastic wealth coupled with the name of India gen- 46 VEDIC INDIA. erally, is realized in India's most southern and latest annexed appendage, the Isle of Ceylon. That island, about three fourths the size of Ireland, is in very truth what the adjoining continent was long errone- ously thought to be : the richest mine in the world of the rarest, choicest precious stones of nearly every known kind ; independently of and apart from its pearl-fisheries, which yield the most perfect pearls in existence, surpassing even those of the Persian Gulf in purity and soft radiance. Nor is the island less surpassingly endowed with regard to vegetation. The interior is one huge tropical forest, where all the palms, timber-trees, gum-trees, spice- and fruit- trees of India thrive side by side with those of Europe and other temperate zones ; the cotton there grows to the size of a real tree, and justifies the apparently exaggerated accounts of the Greeks (see p. ) ; and to all these must be added the cofTee-tree which grows wild, and the wonderful bread-tree, not to speak of the vanilla vine, cinnamon, and other most valuable plants, and, of late, the successful tea plantations. In its animal creation, Ceylon is not less blest : it abounds in most kinds of handsome and useful animals, except horses, which are entirely wanting, and is renowned for its breed of elephants, the finest and cleverest, though not the largest, in India. If to all these advantages we add a soil that regularly yields three harvests a year, a glorious and most wholesome climate, not afflicted with extreme heat, notwithstanding the island's position so near the equator, but maintained on a mild and pretty uniform level by a perfect combination of sea and THE WONDERLAND OE THE EAST. A7 mountains, and, as a consequence, absence of fever and all malarial affections, we shall understand why this chosen spot, which Milton might have had in his mind's eye when he spoke of isles " That, like to rich and various gems, inlay The unadorned bosom of the deep," has been called the jewel casket and finishing glory of India ; and we may pre-eminently apply to it the name of "Wonderland of the East," even though it assuredly beseems all this peerless portion of our habitable earth. ^^^ Wj# ^^ ^^ ^^g p ^^ ^^^^^^s« ^^fe *"4^S^^3 ^^ %^^^^S ^^^^^ ^^ m ^^S"^ ^1*^^ ^S 9 CHAPTER II. THE ARYAS. " Who can see the green earth any more As she was by the sources of Time ? Who imagines her fields as she lay In the sunshine unworn by the plough ? Who thinks as they thought, The tribes who then roamed on her breast, Her vigorous, primitive sons ? " Matthew Arnold, from T/ie Future. I. In a work which undertakes to present, in a set of parallel pictures, the history of several nations, differing in race, culture, and religion, but covering pretty much the same span of the world's age, it is at times very difficult to keep them well apart, be- cause the influences to which they mutually subject one another cannot be ignored, unless we are willing to content ourselves with fragmentary and fanciful sketches, leaving a good half of the characteristic traits either indistinct or unaccounted for. Tljis difficulty increases considerably when we have to do with two nations derived from the same stock, and exhibiting such striking affinities, such undenia- 48 THE ARYAS. 49 ble resemblances, as to betray their original identity at every turn and make us feel as though we can actually grasp and hold fast the time when they were as yet undivided, even though that time may lie far beyond all calculable bounds of historical research. Two such sister nations we have in the Aryan Hindus and Eranians. It is impossible to do justice to the history and culture of the one without drawing the other into the same field of vision and comparing the two, — a process which necessarily brings out their common origin, by presenting identi- cal or similar features, obviously borrowed by neither from the other, but inherited by both from a common ancestry. It was thus that in a former volume, when treating of the Eranians, their culture and their religion, we were unavoidably led to trespass on the ground reserved for the present work.^ We found it impossible, " in dealing with the Aryan peoples of Eran, to separate them entirely from their brethren of India, these two Asiatic branches of the Aryan tree being so closely connected in their beginnings, the sap coursing through both being so evidently the same life-blood, that a study of the one necessarily involves a parallel study of the other." ^ Thus we were actually compelled to stop for a brief glimpse at the conditions which regulated the existence of the ancestors of both in the period that has been called " Indo-Eranian,"z. ^., the period before the future settlers of Eran and the future conquerors of India had separated, before they had \^' See Story of Media, Babylon, and Persia, chap, ii.— v. 2 Ibid., p. 36. 4 50 VEDIC INDIA. severally wandered into the countries, far distant from one another and from the primeval home, of which they were to win and hold possession through well-nigh countless future ages. 2. A cursory sketch was sufficient for the compre- hension of Eranian history, because the nations of this branch soon diverged very widely from the parent stock, and went their own separate and strongly individual way. Not so the peoples who descended into India and settled there. The nations of this branch were merely the continuation of the mother trunk. They did not break with any of their ancestral traditions, but, on the contrary, faithfully treasured them, and only in the course of time and further migrations, developed from them, not an opposition, but a progressive and consistent sequel, in the shape of a more elaborate religion and, later on, philosophical systems and speculations, based on the same principles, which, in ruder, simpler forms, had been their intellectual inheritance from the first. At the present stage of our studies, therefore, we must pause for a longer and more searching retro- spect, if we mean to follow out and comprehend the long and gradual evolution of the people who, of all Orientals, are nearest akin to us in thought, in feel- ing, in manner, and in language. By doing so, we feel assured that we are reconstructing the past of our own race at its entrance on the career of, con- scious humanity, that we are learning how our own fathers, in incalculably remote ages, not only lived and labored, but thought and prayed, — nay, how they began to think and to pray. THE ARYAS. 51 3. A fascinating task, but not as easy as it would seem. For, if learning be a difficult achievement, far more difficult is that of z/!;zlearning, — forgetting what we have assimilated through years of that conscious or unconscious process of absorption which not only fills but, so to speak, permeates our brains, moulds and shapes them, till our mental acquirements be- come part of our being, in fact the most tenacious, the most inalienable part of ourselves. Yet this is exactly what we must strive to do, if we would suc- cessfully identify ourselves with these beginnings of all the things of which we, in this our span of life, are witnessing the bloom, the fruition, the perfec- tion, and, alas! in many cases, the decay. We must not forget for a time what forms as much a part of our intellectual consciousness, as breath or motion does of our physical existence. This mode of work- ing backward, dropping item after item of our intel- lectual ballast as we go, alone enables us to divest ourselves of our obtrusive and narrow self and to put ourselves in the place of our remote progeni- tors, to think their eager but as yet untutored thoughts, to feel with their simple directness, their unsophisticated intenseness. 4. Behold them, then, our forefathers, the Aryas, in their early inland home — which, let it be at once understood, is neither India nor the Eran of the Zoroastrians, but some region, not as yet ascertained, though eagerly and patiently sought for, — where the ancestors of both these and many more nations have dwelt as one undivided race for many ages before that ever spying, ever prying spirit of inquiry, which 52 VEDIC INDIA. is one of the chief characteristics of our race, first stirred in their settlements. At that moment we already find a people, rude and primitive, but by no means wholly savage or barbarous, nor even what is usually understood by " a very young people." For the earliest glimpse it is permitted us to cast into their dwelling-places and mode of life shows them pos- sessed of domestic arts and crafts which, rudimentary as they may appear to us, imply centuries of undis- turbed sojourning in the land of their primary choosing, under conditions favoring the training and development of the most essential features of moral and social culture, as well as of material prosperity. A people must have passed out of the purely no- madic stage,' to be found established in rural home- steads ; nor can it be said to be in its infancy when, after having achieved the momentous transition, it has gone beyond the solitary family life in de- tached dwellings — huts built on a patch of enclosed land,^ — and has learned to cluster these homesteads into villages and boroughs, for mutual protection and assistance, — where their daily life presents the normal and healthful combination of agricultural labor and cattle-breeding, in short the manifold occu- pations which, in our languages, go under the name of " farming," — without excluding the e,xercise of hunting, now, however, a relaxation more than a necessity, a means of introducing wholesome variety into the monotony of the daily farm-fare, and also of repelling and destroying the ravenous night-prowlers, the wild creatures of the woods and the desert, ^^ ' See Sto7y of Chaldca, ch. i., " The Four Stages of Culture." THE ARYAS. 53 Once arrived at this really advanced stage of culture, the Aryas, like all primitive races, must have ad- vanced rapidly in the work of social organization, for we ever find intellectual improvement developing hand in hand with material prosperity. It is an at- tractive and instructive task to reconstruct their life from such imperfect and scattered scraps of informa- tion as we can dispose of. 5. The first feature which it pleases us to note in these early settlements of our own, still undivided, race, is the reverence for family ties and duties, firmly established and held sacred. The father ac- knowledges himself the protector, supporter, and nourisher of his own immediate family ; brothers and sisters live on terms of mutual assistance and cheer- ful companionship, sharing in the manifold duties of house and farm. The degrees of relationship by marriage are determined to a nicety, and persons connected by this secondary bond are close friends and allies. Thus the family grows into the tribe; the head of the one remains the head, the king, of the other.* The several tribes, at first more or less closely related, live, as a rule, on terms of peaceful neighborliness and hospitality. If quarrels do occur and lead to armed strife, they mostly arise out of some dispute about flocks and herds, and, at a later time, out of the competition between kin- dred tribes striving for supremacy or the appro- priation of more land. At the more primitive era the principal occasion of warfare was one calcu- lated to tighten the bond of race rather than loosen ' See Story of Chaldea^ cli. i., especially pp. 123-125. 54 VEDIC INDIA. it, being self-defence, the constant necessity of guard- ing against the raids of innumerable, lawless hordes of nomads, mostly of non-Aryan stock, who, mounted on their fleet and indefatigable steppe-ponies, kept continually hovering and circling round the pasture lands and settlements, whose prosperity excited their greed. 6. Physically, the Aryas, as we can picture them from certain indications, are of high stature, and powerful build, white-skinned, fair-haired, and prob- ably blue-eyed. Ages of seclusion in their first home have moulded these originally local characteristics into a permanent, indelible type, which no amount of uniting with other races will ever be able wholly to obliterate. To the development of this noble physique their mode of life — mostly outdoor labor in moderation — and their favorable surroundings, must have contributed not a little: a temperate cli- mate inclining to the cold, a land of alternate woods and plains, milk-food in abundance, as well as meat and wheat, pastoral and agricultural pursuits, — such conditions of existence, if continued through many centuries, undisturbed by intercourse with men of different blood and customs, must result in an excep- tionally fine race. Nor are these natural advantages unassisted by art and crafts. The Aryas are prompt and skilful in wielding weapons, which, it is true, are mostly still of hewn and polished stone, shaped and sharpened at an incalculable cost of time and labor, but by no means inefficient for all their clumsiness. Besides, they have lately learned the use of metals also : gold and silver certainly, and a third metal not THE ARYAS, 55 fully identified yet — perhaps iron. They can fashion and handle a rude sort of plough, which, uncouth as it is, has not only survived its original inventors, but is still in use in more or less remote parts of every country of Europe, owing to the conservatism and stubbornness of the peasantry all over the world, wherever they have not been brought into direct contact and brisk intercourse with the greater or lesser centres of trade and traffic. Their garments are made of skins sewed together or of spun and woven wool. They dwell in houses provided with doors, and surrounded by yards, (or gardens), which simply means " enclosed grounds." They also have hurdles for their cattle and domestic animals — a necessary addition, for they possess very nearly every kind that we own : horses and asses, sheep and goats, pigs and geese, with the dog to guard them, the mouse to pilfer their stores, the wolf and the bear to endanger their folds ; they grind their grain, they cook and bake, and have a horror of raw meat. They build boats and skiffs and navigation is known to them, though only on lakes and rivers, for they have never beheld a sea or ocean. Their minds are open to all impressions ; their thoughts are busy with the phenomena of nature ; but in abstract speculation they have not yet reached a very advanced stage — for they can count only up to a hundred. 7. Such we can picture to ourselves the Aryas, dwelling together as one undivided nation, speaking one language, holding one worship, one mode of life, before they yield to the impulse of migration which has seized on all peoples at certain stages of their 56 veDic in ma. existence, when they — whether from want of room, or family discords, or the restlessness of awakening curiosity and unconscious sense of power, or from all these combined — begin to separate, and detach- ment after detachment leaves the mother trunk, never to return and never again to meet, save in ages to come, mostly as enemies, with no remotest mem- ory of a long severed tie, of a common origin. 8. As tradition itself does not begin its doubtful records till ages after this original separation, and the dawn of history finds most of the nations which we ascribe to the Aryan stock established on the lands of which they had severally taken possession, it fol- lows that we have just been contemplating a picture for which we have not the slightest tangible materials. No monuments, no coins, inscriptions, hieroglyphic scrawls, reach back as far as the time we have endeavored to retrace. Indeed, the first really historical monuments of any kind at our command are the inscriptions, caused to be engraved in various parts of Hindustan, on pillars and rocks, by ASHOKA, a king who reigned as late as 250 B.C. The same applies to architecture ; no buildings or ruins of buildings are to be traced further back than 500 B.C. Was it then an imaginary sketch, the features of which were put together at random, supplied by fancy or any trite description of pastoral life? So far from it, we can boldly say : would that all infor- mation that comes down to us as history were as true to nature, as well authenticated, as this short sketch of an age on which not even the marvellously trained skill of modern historical investigation could fasten THE ARYAS. 57 by so much as a single thread. But where history throws down the web, philology takes it up and places in our hands the threads which connect us with that immeasurable past — threads which we have held and helped to spin all the days of our lives, but the magic power of which we did not suspect until the new science, Ariadne-like, taught us where to fasten them, when we have but to follow ; these threads are — our languages. 9. A hundred years ago, several eminent English scholars resided in India, as servants of the East India Company, and, unlike their coarse and igno- rant predecessors, thought it their duty to become familiar both with the spoken dialects and the liter- ary languages of the country they helped to govern. They were earnest and enthusiastic men, and the discovery of an intellectual world so new and ap- parently different from ours drew them irresisti- bly on, into deeper studies than their duties re- quired. Warren Hastings, then the head of the executive government, representing the Company in India, cordially patronized their efforts, from political reasons as well as from a personal taste for scholarly pursuits, and not content with lending them his powerful moral countenance, gave them material assistance, and even urgently commended them to the Board of Directors at home. It was then that Charles Wilkins translated portions of the great national epic, the Mahabharata, and compiled the first Sanskrit grammar in English ; that Sir William Jones ^ translated the national code ' The old enemy and traducer of Anquetil Duperron. — See Story of Media, etc., pp. 12-15. 58 VEDIC INDIA. known as " The Laws of Manu " ; while Cole- BROOKE wrote masterly treatises on Hindu law, philosophy, literature, and mathematics. These in- defatigable learners could not but be struck with the exceeding- resemblance, nay frequently the obvious identity, between a great number of Sanskrit words and the corresponding words in all or many of the living languages of Europe, as well as in the dead tongues of ancient Greece and Rome, the old Teutonic and Slavic idioms. The great future importance of this discovery at once flashed on the mental vision of these gifted and highly trained students, and comparative studies were zealously entered upon. Great and noble was the work which these men did, with results, on the whole, marvel- lously correct ; but, as is always the case with such zealous pioneering in a new field, some of the con- clusions they arrived at were necessarily immature and misleadingly positive and sweeping. Thus it was for many years universally believed that Sanskrit was the mother tongue, to which all languages could be traced. This theory was not by far as absurd as that which had been set up some time previously by certain religious zealots who, from an exaggerated regard, untutored by science, for all that is connected with the " inspired books " of our creed, went so far as to assert that Hebrew was the mother of all the languages in the world. Still it might, from its plausibility and the large percentage of truth it con- tained, have done much harm, by leading people to imagine that they had touched the goal, when, in reality, they were at the initial stage of knowledge ; THE ARYAS. 59 but the question was placed on its proper ground by the somewhat later discovery of a still more ancient language, standing to Sanskrit in the relation of Latin to French, Italian, and Spanish, or Old German to English. Since then Jacob Grimm discovered the law that rules the changes of consonants in their passage from language to language, — the law that bears his name, although it is but one among the many titles to glory of that most indefatigable, most luminous of searchers. The unity of Aryan speech is now established beyond the possibility of a doubt. 10. This common language, or — more correctly — this common ancestor of the so-called Aryan family of tongues, would prove, could it be raised from the dead, to be that of the race, whose mode of life and state of culture we just now attempted to reconstruct. Reconstruct from what ? From nothing but the words, which are the only heirloom they have transmitted to us, their late and widely scattered successors. Only words. But as words stand for thoughts, and knowledge, and feelings, this heirloom implies all our histories, all our philo- sophical systems, our poetry — in fact, all that we are and will be. It is the nutshell in the fairy tale, out of which the endless web is forthcoming, unrolling fold after fold of marvellous designs and matchless variety of color. 11. If, then, in the oldest offspring of this imme- morial language, we find words which we meet alike in most Aryan languages of a later growth and in our present living ones, unchanged or having under- gone such slight alterations that any intelligent per- 6o VEDIC INDIA. son will immediately know them, — and if those words, all or nearly all, concern the most essential and therefore most ordinary features of social and domestic life, the simplest pursuits and relations and chief necessaries of our material existence — have we not there evidence amounting to proof, that the rela- tions determined by those words existed, that the things called by those names were in use, the actions expressed by those verbs were habitually done, amongst and by those men, the ancestors of many of us, several, nay, many thousands of years ago ? And are not the " points " thus obtained sufficient, lack- ing any visible or tangible materials, to arrive at something much more substantial and reliable than mere conjecture on what the life, pursuits, and ideas of those men may and must have been ? Could we apply the test to the short sketch from which we started, it would bear out every single word of it, — literally " every word," for it is composed of noth- ing but words, which have been transmitted from the original language to all the languages of the Aryan stock, i. e., later Sanskrit and the Hindu dia- lects, ancient Avestan and modern Persian, and the tongues of the Greek, Latin, Teutonic, Slavic, and Celtic branches. 12. Almost everybody will have noticed that words go in families. That is — several words, and sometimes a great many, are connected with or derived from one another, all expressing different forms or shadings of one common fundamental idea. On examining such words more closely, it will turn out that this common idea resides in a cer- THE ARYAS. 6 1 tain combination of sounds which will be found in all. This combination we detach from the words to which it gives their general meaning, and call it " a root," Let us take as an example the following words : ^^ stay, stand, stable, stiff, stile, stalwart, staff, stick, stack, stump, stem, stool, stead, state, station, statue, statute, stoic," and many more, with all their numer. ous derivatives, like steady, unsteady, unstable, statid- ard, statuary, statutory, etc. Different as these words are, they all ring the changes on one central idea — that of permanence, stability, remaining fixed in one place. It will readily be seen that this central idea is conveyed by the combination ST, which is as the soul of all these words. In philo- logical parlance, ST is " the root from which they all sprang" ; these and a vast number more, for ST being a Sanskrit root, it runs through all the Aryan lan- guages, ancient and modern, and is in each unusually prolific ; if counted, the words to which it serves as family bond, would go into the hundreds. Let us now take the Sanskrit root AR, of which the general and original meaning is " plough." We find it in- tact in Latin and Italian arare, in Slavic arati — " to plough " ; in Greek arotron, Latin aratrum, Tchekh (so-called Bohemian, a Slavic language) oradlo — " a plough " ; in English arable — " fit to be ploughed " ; in Greek aroura, Latin arvum — " a ploughed field," whence aroma, originally beyond a doubt signifying the peculiar fragrance of a ploughed field, of the loose, moist, upturned earth. It has even been sug- gested — but the attractive suggestion has unfortu- nately not proved capable of sufficient scientific 62 VEDIC INDIA. proof — that the name Arya itself is connected with this root, and that the people who took it for their own originally meant to call themselves " the people who plough," in proud distinction from their sheep-raising, steppe-roaming, robber-neigh- bors-, the Tura.' At the time at which we begin to know them, " Arya " meant " noble," " exalted," " venerable " ; the name had become something al- most sacred, it embodied the Aryan peoples' national pride, — or a feeling deeper still, more intense, en- during, and inspiring : their pride of race, and that down to a very late period ; for was not Dareios, the great Persian king, careful to preface his family genealogy in his famous inscriptions by the state- ment : " I am an Arya, the son of an Arya " ? 13. Neither space nor the scope of the present work allow of our taking up the above sketch and justifying every feature of it by a thorough study of each of the words that suggest it. That would be simply embarking on a treatise of comparative phi- lology. Still, as words have of late acquired such immense importance in the study of what may be called " prehistoric history " — an importance as great as the things found in the caves, mounds, and bar- rows that sheltered primitive humanity in life and death, or, in geology, the fossils and imprints which reveal the meaning of the various rocks and strata, — it will not be an unnecessary digression, ' "Arya and Tura," in later historical times " Eran and Turan;" the same distinction ever, the same opposition, the same battle-cry. {E7'dn, Ef'anian is only a slightly altered form of Aryan ; so is Erin^ the national name of /rdand.) THE ARYAS. 63 if we pause awhile to trace a few of the words which are our only key, and by no means an insuflticient one, to the material and intellectual life of the early Aryan world. This brief review will at the same time serve to indicate and illustrate the processes of philological research in their special bearings on historical reconstruction. 14. We have already had a hint of the great im- portance which attached to the cow as a factor in the life of early Aryan communities. Indeed we may safely proclaim the cow the characteristic animal of the Aryan race. We find it the companion of every Aryan people, one of the chief conditions of their existence ; it stands to the Aryas in exactly the same relation that the sheep does to the Tura- nians. The very fact of the cow's predominance in a people's life is sufficient proof of that people's having reached the settled stage of existence^ — the pastoral-farming, because the cow, unlike the sheep, is unfit for a nomadic life and incapable of bear- ing the hardship of continual change and march- ing. Those who use oxen as beasts of burden and draught know very well that they have to be driven at an easy pace, by short stages, and moreover posi- tively require one full day of rest at least in seven or eight, if they are to be kept in anything like toler- able condition. They are also very fastidious as to their food, and the least neglect in the care of them, the least pressure of overwork, cause loss of flesh and spirits, agonizingly sore hoofs, then illness and death in a very short time. 15. The Sanskrit name of the cow is GO, plural 64 VEDIC INDIA. gAvas, and this short radical we find running, with the modifications consequent on the character of each, through most of our languages : Old German chuo, modern German kiih, English cow. The Slavic branch has preserved it, like a great many others, in the form most resembling the original. Thus, Old Slavic has govyado, a herd ; modern Servian gove- dar, a cow-herd ; Russian, govyadina, — beef, the flesh of cows and oxen ; then gospodin, master ; gospbd (i), the Lord ; gospodar, the title given to South Slavic rulers ; all meaning originally " master of cows," and corresponding to the Old Sanskrit gopa, which first means a herdsman, and later a chieftain, a king.' By the same evolution of com- pound words from a simple radical, following on the evolution of various more or less subtle shades of meaning from the plain meaning of the original radical, the Sanskrit word gotra, literally " the en- closure which protects a herd from thieves and keeps it from straying," gradually comes to desig- nate a family, then a tribe, i. e., the people who live behind the same walls. i6. Let us linger awhile on a few of the names expressing the closest of domestic ties, for they will give us a precious insight into the Aryas' moral life, and help us realize what we cannot sufficiently im- press on our minds — that, contrary to all first (a ' The association of ideas between " a herdsman " — a leader, ruler of cattle, — and " a king," a leader, ruler of men, is obvious and close ; see the Homeric poems, where the kings, especially the more wealthy and powerful, are regularly titled " shepherds," or "pastors of men." THE ARYAS. 65 priori) impressions and plausible prejudice born of faulty training, in adjusting our historical glasses to an unhistorical, — otherwise prehistorical, i. e., un- monumental, undocumented — antiquity, the race we have to deal with was far from being a primitive — or, better, primary — block of humanity, unshaped, save to the lowest uses of material service to the one instinct of preserving life, with none as yet of the re- fining, ennobling stirrings of the spirit which come from experience, length of days, and leisure from bodily toil, — leisure to look and listen, to think, re- member, feel. Rough-hewn they surely were, but they were the finest material ever provided for chisel to work upon, and the work had been going on for more years — nay, centuries, than we at first feel at all willing to concede. Whenever we address our thoughts to the human race of a few thousand years back, we pucker our lips into a superciliously con- descending smile, and admire how many fine things our race could do and say when it was so very young and, naturally, ignorant. We should know better by this time ; for has not Chaldea — to take but one branch — taught us that as far as six or seven thou- sand years ago great civilizations had not only dawned or begun to bloom, but some had reached and even passed their maturity and were declining into that inevitable doom of decay into which others were to follow them and some, to a certainty, had preceded them. A very little calculation of probabili- ties will show us that mankind, at the very earliest point at which our eager grasp can secure the first slight hold of it, was not young, and when it had 5 66 VEDIC INDIA. reached, say, the cave-dweUing stage, had probably existed, in the dignity of speaking, fire-using Man, more centuries than separate it from ourselves. To stand out at all where the long slim ray from the prying bull's-eye of modern research, historic or pre- historic, can, however feebly, reach it, the race — or a race — must have emerged out of the colorless past of tentative groping, into a stage of positive achieve- ment of some kind — for without that, without some- thing to hold to, our most pressing questionings must have been eluded and have been met by nought but the silence of the grave. 17. Let us then try to open the intellectual treas- ure-house of our earliest forebears with the golden keys they left for our use : their words. We may not yet enquire what they did with them ; that they had them is their crowning glory and our gain, even greater than the wonders of literature in which they culminated. For, in the words of one of the greatest masters of words, their histories and their uses,' " our poets make poems out of words, but every word, if carefully examined, will turn out to be itself a poem, a record of a deed done or of a thought thought by those to whom we owe the whole of our intellectual inheritance. . . ." Take, for instance, the word PITAR — father, the meaning of which is threefold — " feeder," " protector," " ruler " : does not the underlying connection between these at the first glance different conceptions already warrant, by the subtlety and depth of observation which they ' Max Miiller, Biographies of Words, Introduction. THE ARYAS. ^7 betray, the same writer's enthusiastic assertion ' : "Wherever we analyze language in a scholarHke spirit ... we shall find in it the key to some of the deepest secrets of the human mind. . . ." And does it not speak for an already highly de- veloped moral feeling that the root PA, from which is formed pitar, the most generally used word for " father," does not mean " to give birth " but to pro- tect, to support, showing how entirely the Aryan father realized and accepted the idea of duty and re- sponsibility towards those who belonged to him by the most sacred of human ties. Each duty gives corre- sponding rights, just as each right imposes a duty, that the eternal fitness and balance of things may be maintained, that universal duahsm, moral and physical, which is the very root and soul of the world.'' And thus it is that it has been admitted from all time as self-evident that he who fulfils the duty of supporting and protecting a family, has the undisputed right of governing it, of imposing his will as the law of those who depend on his toil and affec- tion for their sustenance, comfort, and safety. Hence pati, "■ master." This is, in few words, a complete definition of the word " patriarch," in which the Greeks, by a trick of language familiar to them, and, among the moderns, to the Germans, have deftly embodied the two indivisible conceptions : " father and ruler." ^ > Ibid. ^ See Story of Assyria, p. lo6. 2 The word " Patriarch" occurs for the first time in the Septua- gint, consequently came into use at a period much later than the 68 VEDIC INDIA. This word "pitar" we can easily pursue through most Aryan languages, ancient and modern, although, as is the manner of words in their wanderings, it now takes on a letter, now drops one, now alters a vowel or even some of its consonants, until it becomes barely recognizable. to the trained eye and ear of the philologist. Thus Sanskrit /zV«r (Avestan/zV^r also), can hardly fail to be at once identified in pater (Greek and Latin), can easily be known in vater and father, the form derived by the two northern sister languages from the old To.vXomzfadar ; the relationship is not quite as obvious \w padre (Spanish and Italian), and especially in the Yrenchpere ; indeed, the three south- ern Latin sister-tongues may be said to have adopted decided corruptions of the original word ; and when we come to Celtic atJiir, athar (Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Armorican), nothing short of scientific training will suffice to establish the identity. i8. The word for " mother " is even more gener- ally in use in the various Aryan languages, and has undergone fewer alterations. The Sanskrit mdtdr, unchanged in Avestan indtar, except in accent, scarcely deviates in the Greek meter dind Latin mater, which abides in the Slavic mater, only slightly short- golden age of Greek speech. Its immediate derivation — or rather composition — is iiom. patrid or pdtra, " a clan, a tribe," and arkhed^ " to rule, "giving the meaning, " ruler ofaclan or tribe." This, how- ever, in no wise impairs the remoter, original association of ideas between path', " father," &n6.pat7-id, " tribe " ; in fact, it still more clearly establishes the twofold — domestic and political— character of the word patrid, " clan," — the family grown into the tribe, and the father of the one into the ruler of the other. Another enlargement — and the tribe has become a people, the patriarch a king. THE ARYAS. 69 ened by modern Russian into matt, very recogniza- ble for once in the Celtic mat hi, even more than in the German mutter, and English mother, from Old Teutonic miiotar ; but corrupted in the Spanish and Italian madre, and the French mere, after exactly the same fashion as the word for " father," — evid'ently with conscious intention to establish a symmetry akin to alliteration — a rhyme — a trick of language by which it pleased a slightly barbaric ear and taste to couple together kindred objects or ideas. The root of this multiform word is MA, " to make," and also "to measure." A combination particularly sugges- tive, since the mother, she who " has given birth," is also she who " measures," " portions out " the pro- visions, the food, and the other necessaries of life to the various members of the household. From the same root we have mas, the moon, the measurer of time, so that the same word means " moon " and " month," as it still does in its Slavic form, " mesiats^ 19. The other words expressing near relationship are no less generally preserved in the several Aryan languages. To begin with : Sanskrit bhrdtar — svdsar; Avestan, brdtar — hvaiihar ; Greek, f rater; (only the word, at the stage of which it comes under our ken, had become diverted from its original meaning and was used in a political or social sense, to designate a member of one of the tribes or brotherhoods — fratri- as — into which citizens were divided. For the family relationship of both brother and sister the Greeks adopted an entirely different word). Latin, frater — soror ; Old Teutonic, brothar — svistar ; modern German, briider — schzvester ; English, brother — 70 VEDIC INDIA. sister ; lidWdin, frate^ fratello—siiora, sorella. (Frate and suora are used exclusively to designate religious brotherhood and sisterhood, " monk " " nun." Frate in this respect answers to the English /rz^ir. J Slavic and Russian, brat — sestra ; Celtic, brdtJdr — siiir ; French, frere — sceur. Take further Sanskrit, duhitar ; Avestan, dughdhar ; Greek, thugater ; Gerr man, tocJiter ; RngUsh, da7(g/iter ; Irish, dear ; Slavic, dushter (the pronunciation cannot be understood from the written word, but must be heard and imi- tated) ; Russian, dotcher, dotch ; Latin and her chief daughter languages, Italian, Spanish, and French, have adopted another designation, filia — figlia — hija —fille. 20. The secondary family ties — those by marriage — are no less nicely determined — which in itself speaks highly for an advanced state of social order, — and the words denoting them also turn up in most Aryan languages, some in many, others in but a few. One example must satisfy us: Sanskrit devdr, "brother-in-law," is almost unchanged in the Rus- sian de'ver and Lithunian deveris, and very recogniz- able in the Greek daer and even the Latin levir. 21. We will conclude with a word embodying bereavement as universal as the family relations, and therefore reserved even more faithfully than many others through most languages of Aryan stock : vidhavd, " widow " ; German, wittzve ; Russian, vdova ; Latin, vidua ; Italian, vedova, corrupted by Spanish into viiida and by French into veuve. A word of mighty import, especially to later and modern India, as it means " husbandless," and so would, all THE ArYAS. 71 alone, suffice to prove that in enforcing the horrible practice of widow-burning on the ground of sacred tradition, the Brahmans have been guilty of heinous misrepresentation ; for, if the custom had, as they assert, existed from the beginning of time, there would have been no vidhavds, no " husbandless women." Now they not only existed, but, as we shall see later on, are repeatedly mentioned, and once in the reli- gious service attending the burial (or, later, the burn- ing) of the dead, explicitly addressed, as returning from the grave or the pyre to stay among the living. All this in the book which the Brahmans regard as the holiest in all their sacred literature. Further- more, in their law-books, also invested with sacred- ness, widows are provided and legislated for at great length. So that the Brahmans stand convicted of deliberately falsifying, at least in this one instance, their own most sacred and, as they believe and assert, revealed texts. And thus the English authori- ties, merely through ignorance of the natives' literary language and their classical literature, were placed in the atrocious necessity of tolerating this abomination or breaking that portion of their agreement with the Hindus by which they engaged not .to interfere with any of their religious observances. Now that the texts themselves and their correct interpretation have been given to the world at large by the life- long labors of our great Sanskritists, the Govern- ment's hands are free to forbid and prevent, by armed force if necessary, these unnatural sacrifices. The abolition of the time-honored horrors of the widow- burning or suttee (more correctly written sati), yields 72 VEDIC INDIA. US one more convincing proof of what tremendous practical issues may be waiting on the mere study of ivords, patiently, peacefully carried on by scholars in their quiet studies and libraries, so remote in space and spirit from the battle-places of the workaday world. 22. It would be easy to swell the list of such pic- turesque and tell-tale words. These few instances, however, must suffice— only adding the remark that the absence of certain words can be at times as eloquently significant by the presumptive negative evidence it supplies. We called the Aryas' primeval home an " inland home," and later stated that " they had never beheld the sea nor the ocean." This is suggested by the fact that no name for " sea " is found in their earliest known language. That name is of later growth and different in the various branches of the Aryan speech, this very difference showing most curiously how one tribe was affected by one aspect of the new element, and another by a totally different, if not opposite one. Latin and Greek call the sea " a highroad " pontos, pontiis — from the same root as pons, pontis, " a bridge," and the Slavic pont(i), Russian pnt(e), " a road." But the Slav does not apply this name to the sea ; that he calls inorie (Latin mar, Italian and Spanish mare, French nier, German meer, hence English mere, " a lake," Celtic miiir), from a Sanskrit root meaning " destruction." A difference well accounted for, when we consider that the only seas the Slavs and Teutons were acquainted with were the Black Sea, the Baltic, and the German Ocean, all rough and THE ARYAS. 73 treacherous, all renowned for their fierce tempests, which must have been destructive indeed to small and imperfect craft, — while the fortunate dweller on the genial Mediterranean shores well could look at the sea, not as a barrier, but as a highroad, more use- ful for trade and travel than any other road. 23. Now as regards intellectual achievements and abstract speculation, we must not be too prompt to depreciate the efforts of our fathers on this ground on the plea that there is no common word for " thousand " in our languages, — or, more correctly in the parent languages of ours — Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Old Teutonic having each fabricated a word of its own, which their respective offspring dutifully adopted with the usual tribal alterations. As to our Aryan forebears, we cannot escape the inference from this fact that they could count only up to a hundred, the numerals so far coinciding in all Aryan languages with almost comical regularity. This, however, is no proof as yet that they had no con- ception of thousands, or never saw things assem- bled in so large a number — men, cattle, etc. They may have known of thousands as so many " tens of hundreds," and counted as we ourselves still do up to a certain point: twelve hundred, eighteen hun- dred, and even twenty hundred, twenty-five hun- dred,, and so on. Furthermore, the very fact of having invented a numeral system at all — and that a decimal one ! — is an achievement which presup- poses a longer growth and evolution both of the mind and language than all the wonders of abstract speculation which followed, and were a necessary 74 VEDIC INDIA. deduction from it, astronomical calculations in- cluded. For every one who has learned and taught knows what a weary long time the beginnings of any science or art take to master, and that, once the first principles are really and firmly grasped, the rest comes with a wonderful and ever-increasing rapidity, with a rush, as it were, partly owing to the training which the mind has undergone in the effort to step from " not thinking " to " thinking," and partly be- cause these same "first principles" really contain the whole art or science, which is only evolved from them, as the variations from the theme, as the play from the plot, or the plant from the seed. 24. One word to conclude this, on the whole, in- troductory chapter. We have come to speak quite familiarly of "the Aryas' primeval home," of their separations and migrations, as though we knew all about these subjects. We are, in a sense, justified in so speaking and imagining, on the testimony afforded by the formation and evolution of lan- guages, of which we can, to a great extent, pursue the track over and across the vast continent which, though geographically one, has been artificially divided, in conformity with political conditions and school conveniences more than with natural charac- teristics, into two separate parts of the world : Asia and Europe. The division is entirely arbitrary, for there is no boundary line south of the Ural chain, and that chain itself, important as it is, from its posi- tion and the treasures it holds, is anything but sepa- rating or forbidding. Of very moderate altitude, with no towering summits or deep-cut gorge-passes. THE ARYAS. 75 its several broad, flat-topped ridges slope down im- perceptibly on the European side, and are by no means beetling or impassable on the Asiatic side either. This barrier, such as it is, stops short far north of the Caspian Sea, leaving a wide gap of flat steppeland invitingly open to roaming hordes with their cattle and luggage-wagons, with only the mild Ural River or Yaik to keep up the geographical fic- tion of a boundary. Through this gap wave after wave of migration and invasion has rolled within the range of historical knowledge, to break into nations whose original kinship is demonstrated by theirv lan- guages. The induction is obvious that many more such waves than we can at all be aware of must have rolled back and forward in times wholly out of the reach of our most searching methods. The diverging directions of such migrations — irregularly timed, of course — as we know of in Asia, and only a few of which can have taken the way of the Uralo-Caspian Gap : to northwest, to west, to southwest, persua- sively point to a centre which, at some incalculably remote period, must have been the starting-point of these departing Aryan hives. Until within the last few years it was the almost universally accepted the- ory that this centre, — which the lines of march of the several nations, as well as their confronted mythical and cosmogonical traditions, pretty consistently locate somewhere in Central Asia, towards the high but fertile tableland of the Pamir region, — was also the original cradle-home of the primeval Aryas. That question, owing to new elements received into the materials and methods of prehistoric research. 'j6 VEDIC INDIA. has been lately reopened, and treated, with varying results, by many able and erudite scholars. But, although each of them, of course, honestly and tri- umphantly believes that he has arrived at the only rational and conclusive solution, it is, as yet, impos- sible to say when and in what way the question will be finally and unanswerably settled — if ever and at all. Fortunately, it is not of the slightest practical importance for general students ; in other words, for any but specialists in ethnology, craniology, etc., and least of all for the subject-matter of this volume. We do not need to pry into the darkness of an in- calculable past beyond the centre of departure just mentioned, which is the first landmark of Aryan antiquity touched with a golden ray of the historical dawn. It is suf^cient to know that that centre, no matter whence the primeval Aryas of all — the Proto- Aryas — may have come, has been a station on which a large portion of the race must have been sojourners for many, many centuries, — that portion of it, at all events, of which the two principal limbs, the leading sister nations of the Aryan East, Eranians and Hindus, divided almost within our ken, for reasons easy to conjecture, if not to establish with actual certainty, and some of which have been alluded to in a former volume. CHAPTER III. THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. I. On the 31st of December, of the year 1600 A.D., Queen Ehzabeth signed a charter incorporating into one soHd body the hitherto disconnected and inde- pendent Enghsh merchants who pHed the export and import trade between England and India, — or the East Indies, as the Indian Continent began to be called, to distinguish it from the islands discovered a hundred years before by Christopher Columbus and known ever since as " the West Indies," thus perpetuating that great man's geographical mistake. In virtue of this charter, 125 shareholders, with a joint stock of ^70,000, entitled themselves " The Governor and Company of Merchants of Lon- don Trading to the East Indies," both charter and privileges being granted for a limited time, to be renewed on application at stated intervals. Such were the modest beginnings of that famous " East India Company," which was to ofTer the world the unprecedented spectacle of a private association ruling, with sovereign power and rights, a land of ten times the population of their mother country, sub- 77 yB VEDIC INDIA. jects in one hemisphere, kings in the other, treating with royalties on an equal footing, levying armies, waging war and making peace, signing treaties, and appointing a civil government. 2. Not that the English Company was alone or even first in the field or had things its own way in India from the beginning. On the contrary, the object of its creation was to counteract the influence of the rival company of Portuguese merchants, and to wrest from them some of those profits and advan- tages which they were monopolizing ever since Vasco de Gama opened the direct route to India, by doub- ling the Cape of Good Hope in 1498. Through the whole of the sixteenth century the Portuguese had enjoyed an undisputed supremacy in the eastern seas and on the Indian Continent, ingratiating them- selves with the numerous princes, Mohammedan and native Hindu, extending their possessions by grants, by purchase, or by actual force. There is no doubt that they contemplated a gradual annexation of province after province and the eventual sovereignty of the entire country. They seemed in a fair way to achieve what they schemed, when the English Com- pany came forward, enterprising and active, and stoutly equipped for vigorous competition, and they almost immediately began to lose ground before the new arrivals, having thoroughly alienated the people by their unscrupulous dealings, their unmitigated rapacity, and their ruthless cruelty in seeking their profits and enforcing, by fire and torture, the so-called conversion of the unfortunate population who had received them with unsuspecting and generous hospi- THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 79 tality. Step by step the Portuguese receded before the EngHsh company, one source of wealth after another was barred to them until, in 1661, they voluntarily yielded up to the English Crown the last of their important possessions, the city and district of Bombay, as part of the dowry of the Portuguese princess Catharine of Braganza when she was be- trothed to Charles II. (Stuart). So ignorant were England's official statesmen at the time of the value of the gift, which they regarded as a most ungainly and unprofitable appendage, that they, in their turn, ceded it to the Company for the ridiculous consid- eration of an annual payment of £\o sterling ! 3. Still, though so easily rid of Portuguese com- petition, the Company was far from running an unobstructed race for power and wealth. Their example speedily fired other nations to emulation. Within twelve years from their incorporation several East India Companies had sprung up: a Dutch, a French, and a Danish one. This last, however, as well as a German and even a Swedish one, which haltingly brought up the rear a full hundred years later, never were of sufficient account to molest the English Company or cause them any anxiety. Not so the two former. The Dutch, being confessedly the foremost maritime power all through the seven- teenth century, and conducting their Indian venture not only on enterprising, but on vigorously aggres- sive principles, proved most formidable neighbors and rivals, the more so that they did not confine themselves to operations on the continent, but swiftly secured the partial or entire possession of the 8o VEDIC INDIA. • numerous and inexhaustibly rich islands — Ceylon, Sumatra, Java, and the Moluccas — which stud the Indian Ocean, singly and in groups, forming a sort of appendage to India proper as well as a peristyle to the island world of the Pacific Ocean. It was only after a struggle, sometimes a bloody one, be- tween the two companies, which lasted over a century, that the Dutch gradually retreated from the continent and centred all their efforts and re- sources on the islands which to this day obey their rule. The French Company was now the only real rival whom the English were bound to watch and fear, for its ambition was directed to precisely the same end that they pursued themselves : undivided supremacy in this, the treasure-land of the East, and as it was frequently managed by men of high ability, it seemed more than once on the point of actually compassing its object. The chief difficulty it had to contend with, and one which eventually stranded it, was the indifference of the people at home and the heartless callousness which refused it assistance of any sort at the most critical moments. It so hap- pened that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, one of the ablest French directors, DUPLEIX, was pitted against one of England's most remarkable men, Governor — later Lord — Clive. The struggle between these two men, in open war and in diplo- matic efforts to secure the favor of the most power- ful native princes, furnishes one of the most brilliant pages of history. The signal victories gained by the Englishmen at that time, have been set down as the beginning of the modern British Empire in India, THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 8 1 for, the French Company once beaten from the field, the competition was virtually at an end, and the French possessions do not interfere with the British rule any more than the few miles of land which the Portuguese still own on the western shore. 4. That this rule henceforth became firmly estab- lished and was more or less willingly submitted to by the people of India and such of the native princes who were still allowed, as allies or vassals of the Company, a semblance of independence and a lim- ited range of power, England owed to the men who, at this particularly critical period, were invested with supreme authority. It was desirable that the con- quest by force of arms should be followed up by a wise and mild civil administration, and it was owing to the Company's good fortune more than their wis- dom that, for once, the Indian offices in their gift were filled by a set of men such as seldom are brought together to co-operate in a common field of action, — emphatically the right men in the right places. Lord Clive's successor, the illustrious and highly cultured Warren Hastings, seems to have been the first English governor who took pains to understand the people he ruled. He was not an Orientalist, nor a scholar at all, either generally or specially. Had he been, he would have been far less well fitted either for his executive duties or for the part of sympathizing and impartial patronage into which he quite naturally fell towards those men, officially his subordinates, whose studies were of such material assistance to him in compassing his noble ends. As a private man, Warren Hastings 82 VEDIC INDIA. was an enlightened and refined amateur ; as a states- man and the supreme ruler of a huge so-called bar- barous land, whose inhabitants had, up to him, been looked on as so many million beasts of drought or burden, or — worse for them still — living treasure- casks, to be tapped, and staved in, and rifled of their contents by all and any means, he quickly gauged the importance of the unexpected help that was thus almost providentially tendered him towards his great aim : learning to understand the people and then govern them in accordance with modern humane standards. 5. But how do justice, wisely, comprehensively, to a people about whom one does not know the first thing ? whose origin, history, worship, whose beliefs, views, modes of thought and life, are all a blank ; whose manners and customs are looked down on from the foreigner's standpoint, as being all wrong, absurd, laughable, and not for one moment to be considered or respected, simply because they are unlike his own ; whose laws . . . but their laws are unknown, as is their literary language — if they have a literature, a doubtful, or rather hitherto un- mooted point. So, with the best will, nothing re- mains to the European governor, in his helpless ignorance, but to judge the cases that come before him, to the best of his ability, according to his own country's laws, as unknown and strange to the people as theirs are to him, or, — if thrown on his own discretion, after standards of modern Western thought and manners, which fit the Oriental's mind and life about as well as the European garb his THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 83 bodily habits and sense of beauty and fitness. Chance, which, in the vast field of Oriental discovery has, from the beginning, played so predominant a part, here again befriended the earnest searchers, by frequently putting unlooked for opportunities in their way, or placing within their reach precious finds of which they learned the value and the bear- ing only in using them, sometimes at first with quite a different object from that to which they were led by the threads thrust into their searching hands. Of how one may, in such studies, set out to look for one thing, and blunder on another, far richer and more valuable, we have an amusing instance on rec- ord in an experience of Sir William Jones, which opened to the amazed scholars of Europe the vast and hitherto unsuspected world of Indian fine literature. 6. It was scarcely five years since Sir William's appointment to the Supreme Court of Bengal, and four since the foundation of the Bengal Asiatic So- ciety (1784), and in this short period the great Arabic and Persian scholar, who had brought to his com- paratively late vocation — the law, the same earnest- ness, thoroughness, and facility that had so early lifted him to the summit in his beloved Oriental and linguistic studies, had very nearly mastered the in- tricate and unfamiliar Sanskrit tongue. Not that it was of much practical use in the transaction of cur- rent court business, for, as is perhaps not generally known except to special students, Sanskrit is a dead language, which stands to modern Hindustanee in the relation of Latin to Italian ; but so nmch was known, that the entire body of native high-standard litera- 84' VEDIC INDIA. ture, classical or special, was enshrined in that lan- guage, and Sir William, with his usual intrepidity, undertook an exhaustive study of India's national legislation, an intimate knowledge of which was indispensable to a rational and humane adminis- tration. As scholarly qualifications and competitive examinations were not dreamt of then as require- ments for Indian appointments, it was necessary — if the good work now inaugurated was not to remain merely the temporary achievement of an exceptional group of men, to be obliterated by the ignorance of their successors — to place that knowledge within every functionary's reach, by transferring it into the English language. This gigantic task resulted in Jones' famous DIGEST OF HiNDU Laws, — which, however, he was not permitted to complete, — and in the translation of the INSTITUTES OF Manu, the code most widely acknowledged in India. This work, the last of a life heaped to overflowing with noble labor, but shortened by the long, never relax- ing strain under a homicidal climate, was published just before his death, in 1790. It had for years been his pet project, and, the better to fit himself for it, he had devoted his few hours of comparative leisure to literary and linguistic studies in the seemingly boundless field of Sanskrit scholarship. 7. Once, when so employed, under the guidance qf a competent and intelligent Brahman master. Sir William bethought him of a passage in a well- known collection of Catholic missionaries' letters about certain " books called Ndtac " and supposed to "contain a large portion of ancient history, without THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 8$ any mixture of fable." As nothing is so hard to get in all the huge mass of Sanskrit writing as a crumb of real history, he made inquiries, having a strong inducement, as he says himself, in his desire to learn anything that might in any way be connected with the administration of justice. But he could not make much of the information that was given him, except that those books were not histories but abounded with fables, and consisted of conversations, in prose and verse, on an infinite variety of subjects, and in various dialects of India, " from which he naturally concluded that they were some sort of dialogues on moral and literary topics," until a more than usually observant and intelligent Brahman, he goes on to re- late, " removed all his doubts and gave him no less delight than surprise by telling him that the English had compositions of the same sort, which were pub- licly represented at Calcutta and bore the name, as he had been informed, of plays. . . ." Naturally, Sir William asked which was the most popular of these Natakas or dramas, and was answered "THE RiNG OF Shakuntala." Whereupon, he proceeds to tell, " I soon procured a correct copy, and, assisted by my teacher, began with translating it verbally into Latin, which bears so great a resemblance to Sanskrit that it is more convenient than any modern language for a scrupulous interlineary version. I then turned it word for word into English, and afterwards, without adding or suppressing any material sentence, disengaged it from the stiffness of a foreign idiom, and prepared the faithful translation of the Indian drama, which I now present to the public." 8. Thus, out of something very like a grammar exercise, came a revelation of beauty and high art, the unpretending form of which enhanced its effect 86 VEDIC INDIA. on the literary and scholarly world of the West. " Shakuntala " has been translated into nearly all European languages, sometimes in exquisite verse — but for years was known only from the great lawyer's almost interlinear prose rendering, and in this sim- ple garb aroused unbounded enthusiasm and aston- ishment. Needless to say what a sudden lift was given in public opinion to the hitherto despised " natives " of a land valued merely for its wealth, by the discovery that, instead of the rude attempts at poetical expression with which the most liberal were willing to credit them, they possessed a fine litera- ture as abundant, if not as varied, as any in the West — older, too, than any, not excepting the so-called classical ones, glittering with all the finish and the brilliancy of their country's owYi rainbow-hued thousand-faceted gems. For, with Shakuntala, the Hindu theatre was discovered, a mine as rich in legend and mythic lore as the Greek and Elizabethan dramas. With the latter, indeed, as piece after piece came to light, the Hindu drama was found to have astonishing af^nities, not only in the general manner of treating the subject and working the plot, in the natural, unconstrained development of the characters and sequence of events, but down to details of form. " They are all in verse," says Sir William Jones, who, being once put on the right track, did not, we may be sure, rest content with one specimen, " w^here the dialogue is elevated, and in prose where it is familiar: the men of rank and learning are repre- sented as speaking pure Sanskrit, and the women Prakrit, which is little more than the language of the THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 8/ Brahmans melted down by a careful articulation to the softness of Italian ; while the low persons of the drama speak the vulgar dialects of the several prov- inces which they are supposed to inhabit." Does not this description apply word for word to the Shakespearian drama? Not even prologues and epilogues are wanting — addresses to the audience by the manager, a chief actor, or an allegorical character, — with explanations of matters pertaining to the play, or the usual petitions for an indulgent hearing and kind forbearance with shortcomings, while the remarks or expressions of feeling thrown in by the secondary characters — friends, spectators, and the like — strongly remind us of the Greek chorus.' ' Not that any intrinsic connection between the two dramas can be supposed or admitted. Some few scholars, indeed, advance the hypothesis that the Hindu drama may have been influenced by its great Greek predecessor. They find a suggestion to that effect in the circumstance that Greek female slaves are mentioned in one play, — that the Hindu play, like the Greek tragedy, took for its heroes royal or semi-divine personages, and its subjects from the cycle of national myth and heroic romance. That the drama flourished in the Western provinces and along the Western coastland, while it had no hold at all on the Eastern portion of India, seems to them to confirm their hypothesis. But serious researches have resulted in the rejection of any direct action or intrinsic affinity. A study of the Hindu drama does not enter into the scope of this volume, except incidentally as one of the sources of our knowledge of the country and people. But it is a fascinating subject, on which full informa- tion can be obtained in the most attractive form from the following works : The Hindu Theatre of W. H. Wilson, with a most valu-.- able introduction ; the chapter on the same subject in Schroeder's popular but scholarly and reliable lectures, Indiens Literattir und Cultur ; in Etudes de Litte'rature Sanscrite by Philibert Souppe ; also Le Thddtre Indien (Paris, 1890), by Sylvain Levy. 88 VEDIC INDIA. 9. The Hindu drama, like the Elizabethan, bursts on us in full flush of perfection, and its beginnings, the unskilled stammerings of the voice which charms us with its plenitude of harmony, are lost to us. This is only natural, in an age and land where there was no printing-press, to create an artificial immortality and embalm for the bewilderment of future genera- tions the still-born efforts of an infant muse: the wholesome working of that lately discovered law known as "survival of the fittest," applies to the intellectual as well as to the physical world. " Shakuntala " belongs to the golden age of the drama, that of a king of the name of Vikramaditya, who reigned in the fifth century, A.D,, at UjJAIN, one of the most ancient and sacred cities of India, in the present native vassal state of Malwa, and at whose court the author, Kalidasa, who has been surnamed " the Hindu Shakespeare," and who distinguished himself in other branches of poetry besides the drama, appears to have lived. It seems not a little wonderful that, in the remote and unknown East, a contemporary of Hengist and Horsa should indite works which could inspire such a critic as Goethe with lines like his famous epigram on Kalidasa's favorite play : Wouldst thou the young year's blossoms and the fruits of its decline, And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed, — Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine? I name thee, O Shakuntala, and all at once is said. 10. Not less great than the admiration for the play as a work of art was the astonishment at the plot, when it was perceived that it is founded on one THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 89 of the most universally familiar stories of European folk-lore : that of the lover who, stricken by a wicked spell, forgets his love — whether sweetheart or bride — and recovers his memory of her only on seeing the golden ring he gave her, and which is brought back to him under a variety of romantic circumstances — sometimes by the maiden's or wife's own contrivance, as when she arrives to find him on the point of wed- ding another and manages to have the ring dropped into the goblet of wine presented him at the feast — sometimes by sheer accident. The latter is the solu- tion adopted by Kalidasa, and — doubly wonderful — the accident is the same which makes the subject of one of the best known and most popular stories bequeathed us by Greek antiquity. The ring is dis- covered in the stomach of an exceptionally fine fish caught in a stream into which Shakuntala had acci- dentally dropped it, and the fisherman, accused of stealing it, is brought into the presence of the king for judgment ; the ring is produced, and, the moment it catches the monarch's eye, he awakes as from a trance and asks for his wife. Now, who does not remember the same ring-and-fish incident as told by Herodotus in his story of Polykrates, the too fortu- nate tyrant of Samos, who casts into the sea his most costly and highly prized ring, to propitiate the Deity by a voluntary sacrifice, and sees it reappear the same night at his table, cut out of the body of a huge fish presented to him by the fisherman as too fine for any but the royal board ? There is no love in the case, and the Greek uses the incident to point a moral of his own, but the incident itself is there, in both, identical. 90 VEDIC INDIA. II. Another play by the same poet, ViKRAMA AND Urvasi, or The Hero and the Nymph, develops a mythical incident made as familiar to us by a pop- ular story from a similar source. A celestial nymph loves and marries an earthly king, warning him, how- ever, that she can abide with him only so long as he will be careful she shall not behold him disrobed. For many years they enjoy unalloyed happiness, when her former companions, the nymphs and sprites, who had sorely missed her, resolved to bring her back by stratagem and contrived, by sending an oppor- tune flash of lightning in the night, that the condi- tion of her existence on earth should be violated. In that flash she saw her lord divested of his robes, — and, with a wail, forthwith vanished. King Vikrama mourned for her and sought her all over the world, until, after long, sorrowful wanderings, he found her and they were miraculously reunited. Even this brief epitome will at once have suggested to the lover of storydom the adventures of Eros AND PSYCHE as told by that bright story-teller, the precursor of Boccaccio and Chaucer, Greek Apuleius, in spite of a few circumstances being altered or even inverted. In the Greek legend it is the lover who is divine and the woman is a mortal, forbidden from beholding his face or form not only disrobed, but in any way what- ever. And he is not shown to her by any external agency, but she deliberately seeks him with a lighted lamp at the dead of night. Yet the external agency is supplied by the promptings of her sisters, who wish, out of envy or affection, to get her back, and urge her to the disobedience which is her undoing. TttE SOURCES OP OUR KNOWLEDGE. 9 1 As natural, it is she who wanders and seeks for the lost one, to whom she is reunited in the end. And this story too, like that of Shakuntala, can be matched by one of a vastly different age and clime, the north- ern mediaeval legend of LOHENGRIN, THE Knight OP' THE Swan. He too is a more than human being and the maiden he weds is warned that she must ask him no questions as to his past — nor so much as to inquire who he is — for though he must satisfy her, that moment he leaves her. Like Psyche, she listens to evil promptings, breaks the command, and pays the penalty. Li all these stories, vastly differing in details, substance and spirit are the same. 12. That such resemblances could not come under the head of casual coincidence was clear to the most superficial of the "general reader" class, and a mo- mentary curiosity was pretty universally aroused as to what might be their cause and meaning. But the scholarly world — philologists, Orientalists, mytholo- gists — was far more deeply stirred. This was con- firmation of much knowledge that had been coming in thick and fast for some years, — ever since the English residents in India had begun to study San- skrit, and made and promptly published the startling discovery of that ancient tongue's close kinship with all the languages, old and modern, of Europe. Confirmation, too, that completed observations al- ready made in the parallel field of mythology, and embodied by Sir William Jones in a celebrated paper on the affinity — if not identity — of the divini- ties of the Brahmanic religion with the gods and goddesses of the classic world ; an identity which 92 VEDIC INDIA. often extended to minute details, as in the case of KAma, the child-god of Love, bearer of a bow and arrows of flowers, whose very name, meaning DE- SIRE, seems merely translated into the Greek ErOS, and the Latin CUPID. Owing to the same few scholars' indefatigable zeal, which was soon to arouse in Europe the emulation of such men as Friedrich Wilhelm von Schlegel and WlL- HELM VON Humboldt, the field was widening almost hourly, and the great Hindu epics, the Ramayana and the MahabhArata, were becom- ing known, — in fragments at first, as the students went on on the simple plan of translating the selec- tions given them to read by their native teachers, mostly Pundits of renown. But these fragments were like those scattered erratic granite blocks which show what the primeval mountains of the earth were made of. And it was evident that these epics were treasuries of national heroic legends, myths, and stories which all went to prove the same thing, besides being an absolutely inexhaustible mine of information not only on the customs and manners, but also, and even more, on the spiritual life of the Hindu people — the ways of their thinking in reli- gion, philosophy, and ethics. 13. Poetry in India, like the country itself and everything in it — its scenery, its vegetation, all its nature — is on an enlarged scale with regard not only to copiousness of fancy and exuberance of imagery and diction, but to the actual size of its productions, the bulk of words. The dramas, long indeed, do not so far exceed the proportions familiar to our THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 93 training. But what shall we say of the two epics, especially the Mahabharata (more than twice the length of the Ramayana), with its 110,000 shlokas or couplets of two lines, each more than double the length of an ordinary English blank verse line! Only to compute such a mass of words is a prob- lem in arithmetic, and the result must be appalling to a student of even more than average working powers. But then these two gigantic repositories really constitute between them a national encyclo- pedia, not only of heroic and mythic legends and poetical creations, but in at least equal measure of the nation's philosophy, its religion, its political and social theories, and many more grave and profound matters which, in other countries, endowed with a clearer perception of proportions and the fitness of things, are not admitted into the scheme of what should be merely works of art, for purposes of entertainment of an elevating and ennobling nature. Of these Hindu poems, overflowing with wealth of every kind, but nondescript of form and absolutely promiscuous of contents, we can say that they take us through portals of tropical flowers and labyrinthine groves of ambrosial foliage and enticing dalliance, into a sterner world on a higher plane, where the pleasure-seeking mood changes to contemplative and vague questioning, while further still loom the shades of the ascetic anchorite's forest home, and beckon the snow-bound peaks of disembodied thought, in whose rarefied atmosphere nothing can breathe save God-centred meditation and absolute renunciation. 94 VEDIC INDIA. 14. The way is long, and our knowledge of each stage indicated in the ItihAsas (legendary and semi-historical, heroic poems) is supplemented by a mass of literature, the profoundest and abstrusest the world has known, and which to classify alone is a serious work both of memory and discernment, so that mere catalogues of manuscripts — their titles and a brief indication of their subject-matter — are among the most valuable contributions to Orientalist libraries. What we would call the scientific depart- ment is very respectably represented by a number of works on arithmetic, mathematics, astronomy, and grammar, this latter having been carried by the Hindu scholars to a perfection of subtility and pre- cision never equalled by those of any other nation, ancient or modern. Then come jurisprudence and social science, expounded in elaborate works which have for their text books, ist, the DliARMA-SUTRAS and the Dharma-Shastras, a number of codes of various antiquity and authority, the best known of which is the Manava Dharma-ShAstra, or " Insti- tute of Manu " (already mentioned), and, 2d, the Grihya-Sutras, collections of practical rules for the conduct of life, domestic and religious. These man- uals, which are meant for the use of only the priestly class, the Brahmans, are far older than the Shastras, to which they have in a measure served as foundation. Then there are the six systems of philosophy and metaphysics, which cover pretty well the ground explored and battled over by most schools of the West, from antiquity down to our own day : deism, pantheism, idealism, materialism, skep- THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 95 ticism, and even cynicism. Lastly, the PuRANAS, literally " Old Stories," or, rather, " Tales of Eld," which might be, in a general way, likened to the Itihasas, with this very distinctive difference, that — while these and the smaller and sometimes quite short epic poems called Kavyas give us the ex- ploits and adventures of human and semi-divine but still mortal heroes, — the Puranas treat only of gods and their doings, of the creation and other kin- dred subjects, sacred if not wholly religious. In fact, their cycle is methodically classed under the following five heads: ist, the creation of the world, or Cosmogony ; 2d, its successive dissolutions and renovations ; 3d, the genealogy, i. e., the origin and parentage of the gods and patriarchs, or Theogony ; 4th, the reigns of the great patriarchs and ages of the world ; 5th, the history of the ancient, heaven- born dynasties of kings. The bulk total of these collected works, which contain almost the whole dis- tinctively theological literature of the later develop- ment of the Brahmanic religion, or PIlNDUISM, is enormous. There are eighteen so-called " great Puranas," making together 400,000 shlokas, the long- est heading the list with 81,000, and the shortest closing it with 10,000. Of these, some are already translated into various European languages, wholly or in portions ; and the contents of all are well known, and, on the whole, thoroughly studied. They vary in importance and popularity, but greatly surpass in both the sixteen so-called ''lesser" or " secondary " Puranas, the best known part of which is their titles, as they are not common, and lacking 96 VEDIC INDIA. in interest or attractiveness, some even being written in prose. 15. Needless to enumerate the minor classes of works which make up the balance of Sanskrit litera- ture : lyrical and other poems, stories in prose and verse — those of real interest to us being the so- called " beast-stories," the source and models of all the fable-literature of the Aryan world, — works on medicine, various crafts, fine arts, etc. They are generally of very late and many of actually modern date, except the beast-stories which, if comparatively late in form, are, as to contents, as old as the race itself, for most of the animal types and a great many of their adventures belong undoubtedly to its pri- meval treasury, which accounts for their universal adoption by all its branches. It is the vast and massive classes of literature, briefly outlined in the preceding paragraphs, from which we derive our most important and comprehensive knowledge of India ; but they, too, are for the most part com- paratively late productions, embodying stages of culture of very different periods, times ranging through more than twenty centuries, and some quite modern. Now twenty centuries do not take us back to a very remote antiquity — at least it does not seem such to our minds, trained by the last half-century of historical research to grapple with very different chronological problems, our horizon having been widened and moved further and further back until our mental vision now easily reaches the end of a vista of seventy centuries. 16. The first explorers of India's past already THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 97 felt the incompleteness of their efforts in that direc- tion. They entered on their studies with appetites whetted by the few significant disclosures vouchsafed them by chance, and with a keen relish for further revelations along the same line, which was to take them to the glorious goal already dimly visible in the far distance : the primeval unity of all the so- called Aryan nations, in speech, in thought, in wor- ship. They were the more prepared for arduous labor that they could not, as they very well knew, look for assistance to the faithful auxiliaries of the archaeologist in other Oriental fields : the pickaxe and the shovel. The field of Indian research, up to a very late period, is absolutely bare of monuments — including under that name everything tangible, from a temple ruin to a rock inscription and to a fragment of statuary or pottery. All the monuments the Sanskritist can turn to are books, or more cor- rectly manuscripts, and of these the mass kept daily increasing till it threatened to become unmanageable. Yet, even while almost buried under the abundance of valuable material, they felt that their progress was slow, heavy, unsatisfactory. Still, if the polar beacon-light, on which they kept their gaze un- swervingly fixed, did not come nearer, and at times almost seemed to recede, it never disappeared, never went out. Soon they began to see the way that led to it straight, at first vaguely, then more and more clearly, at the same time that they felt an invisible barrier, not of their making, rise up between them and their soul's desire. This barrier was a purely moral one — a silent opposition on the part of the 98 VE/)IC INDIA. English students' native teachers, Brahmans all of them, of high social standing and great learning ac- cording to the nation's standard. Up to a certain point their English pupils found in them willing and sympathetic guides and helpers. But just assure as they came to a passage that seemed to open a gate into the very fields where they longed to explore, their eager questioning was met with feigned ignor- ance, assumed indifference, or evasive rejoinders, generally of the purport that these were things that could not interest foreigners or repay their trouble, seeing they had no importance save for natives. 17. So much the Englishmen quickly made out : that all the subjects which they soon learned were to be kept closed from them, either by passive resist- ance or devices to divert their attention, were the very ones it most imported to them to find out about, invariably bearing on matters of ancient religion or law. They also discovered that these subjects and all the literature treating of them were considered sacred and, as such, to be jealously guarded from the sacrilegious prying of unholy strangers ; further- more, that, the Brahmans as a class being specially entrusted with the guardianship of all things sacred and national, they did not wish their pupils, who were also their masters, to learn too much about matters the knowledge of which might enable them to strengthen their own power at the expense of the Brahmans' own, and to unravel, on occasion, the plot- ting and scheming of the latter, as well as expose the fallac3^ of many of their claims and assertions. The Veda was the name of the forbidden knowledge— THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. 99 literally, for the word means " knowledge." It was applied, as the English students found out, some- times to the sacred books of the ancient religion of India, and sometimes to the body of literature that had gathered around them in the course of time. Those books, four in number, were said by the Brahmans to be a direct verbal revelation from the Most High, and were soon understood by the scholars to be the fountain-head of India's religion and law both. All their efforts were henceforth bent in this direction, but they could accomplish very little, even when they contrived to get hold of portions of the precious texts, as they met another and not less disheartening obstacle in the fact that the language proved to be an older form of Sanskrit, which it was as impossible for them to master unas- sisted as it would be for us to understand without previous study the Anglo-Saxon writings of Bede or Alfred the Great. 18. The second generation of Sanskrit workers fared better, because the more enlightened Brahman Pundits began to drop some of their reserve and forget their apprehensions before their English pupils' earnestness and singlemindedness. It is not improbable that their patriotic feelings, too, may have been flattered, and their hopes aroused of bet- ter government at the hands of men who were striving so hard for knowledge of the people they were called on to rule. How, for instance, could such a man as Henry Thomas COLEBROOKE fail to command their respect and sympathy, when they saw him, a youth of scarcely twenty, resist the lOO VEDIC INDIA. temptations which beset him in the midst of the wealthy, pleasure-loving, and dissipated English official society, and take refuge in his midnight studies unaffected by the allurements of the gam- bling-table ? ' Be it as it may, when Colebrooke, fifteen years after his arrival in India, after complet- ing the compilation and translation of the Digest of Hindu Law begun by Sir William Jones, came out in the same year (1797) with a study of his own — Essays on the Religious Ceremonies of the Hineius, — the work " showed very clearly that he had found excellent instructors, and had been initiated in the most sacred literature of the Brahmans," even had he not explicitly testified in his writings that Brah- mans had proved by no means averse to instruct strangers, and that they did not even conceal from him the most sacred texts of the Veda.'' 19. Sir William Jones, in founding the Bengal Asiatic Society, became the initiator of systematic and consecutive research in the newly opened quarry. His friend and fellow-laborer, Charles Wilkins, lived to be greeted in his native land, at the close of an unusually long and well-filled life, with the title of " Father of Sanskrit Studies." And well earned was the recognition, since he often had sacrificed the tastes which drew him to purely scholarly pursuits in his chosen field, in order to devote himself to the drudgery without which the establishment of the Society must have remained barren of practical ' Colebrooke's Letters. "^ Max Miiller, Chips from a Cerinan Workshop, vol. iv., p. 371 (New York edition, Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., 1876). THE SOURCES OF OUR KNOWLEDGE. lOI results. It was he who organized the first Sanskrit printing ofifice, with absolutely raw material in the shape of native printers and other workmen, who had to be, each individually, shown the very a-b-c of their craft. And not only that, but the type had to be designed and cast, so that Wilkins, in his own single person, was by turns, or all at one time, draughts- man, founder, compositor, type-setter, printer, and proof-reader. Yet these two men, great as were their merits, are regarded now, in the light of a century of marvellously successful work, rather as the precursors and prophets of a science of which Colebrooke is acknowledged the true messiah. For, if his prede- cessors opened, so to speak, the garden of Sanskrit belles-lettres, he it was who began that determined digging down amidst the roots and through the subsoil and stratified layers of words and facts which at length brought down the searchers to the very hard pan of positive knowledge. Religion, law, social institutions (especially that of caste), native sects, grammar, astronomy, arithmetic, and sciences generally, as known to the Hindus — in each of these provinces he showed the way and started the work mapped out for those who were to succeed him by some standard pieces of research, which, for skill and depth of treatment, have never been outdone, even if many of the positions he took up on the high-water line of the knowledge of his time, were naturally swamped by the advancing tide of science. 20. No province of Oriental research is as rich as the Sanskrit field, both in materials and in illustrious workers. Their name is legion ; the mass of their I02 VEDIC INDIA. scholarly achievements, as piled on shelf upon shelf, in rows of more or less ponderous volumes, or scat- tered in loose essays and studies through numberless special periodicals in every European language, is such as to appal not only those that aspire to follow in their footsteps as original searchers, but even, if not still more, those who elect the more modest por- tion of popularizing their works, i. e., of making the world at large interested in and familiar with their aims, their methods, and the results attained so far, and who, in order to do this successfully and reliably, must master the greater portion of what has been done, keeping well up to date, as this is work that never pauses, and each day may bring forth a dis- covery or a point of view more important than the last. To give the names of even the most illustrious of this admirable host were a hopeless attempt, be- sides that mere names are always unprofitable. Many will turn up of themselves in the following pages, in connection with their work, and the bibliographical list appended to this volume, as to the preceding ones, will, it is hoped, in a great measure, supply the want of information on this subject. CHAPTER IV. THE VEDAS. 1. With the vague and sweeping approximative- ness with which we are wont to lump our knowledge or imaginings of all such things as are removed very far away from us in space or time, or both, we rather incline to think of " India " as one country, one na- tion. How ludicrously wide of the mark such a fancy is, has already been shown, and will appear repeat- edly as we advance. Yet it is in so far excusable, that to the European mind, India is identified with one race — the Aryan ; that her history is to us that of this race's vicissitudes on the Himalayan con- tinent, on which it has been supreme so long, mate- rially and spiritually ; that the history of Indian thought and speech is pre-eminently that of the Aryan mind, — until even now, when races have be- come so inextricably mixed that there are no longer any Aryan peoples, but only Aryan languages and, perhaps, traits of intellect and character, we turn to India as one of the fountain-heads of Aryan life. 2. Not the fountain-head. For we know beyond 103 I04 VEDIC INDIA. the need of demonstration that Aryas descended into India after long periods both of stationary life and migrations, in the course of which they traversed the immensities of Central Asia ; we further know almost to a certainty that these Aryas were a dissev- ered branch from a far greater and more numerous nation, to which we have given the name of IndO- Eranians, and which everything — especially the evidence of language and religion — shows to have lived undivided down to a comparatively late period, while and after other swarms had flown, in other di- rections, away from that primeval Aryan mother- hive, which, like all beginnings, must remain forever wrapped in mystery, though we can partly surmise what its language must have been like — the root of our flexional culture-tongues, and its myths, — the primary conceptions of nature in the working of her divinized forces.' We also have good reason to suspect that diversity of feeling in religious matters, deepening in time to a schism, may not have been foreign to the separation.^ 3. When Zarathushtra embodied this revulsion of feeling, which had attuned his people's minds to loftier teachings, in his great religious reform, and gave forth that profession of faith which once forever stamped them with the stern earnestness, the some- what sadly serious spirituality which was to distin- guish them from all ancient nations,' — the separation ' See Story of Media, Babylon, and Persia, pp. Zl ff' ^ lb., pp. 98-100. ^ lb., pp. 102-104. I06 VEDIC INDIA. must have been an accomplished fact, perhaps for some time ah'eady. It is then that we can imagine the first Aryan detacliment — soon to be followed at intervals by others — emerging, still awe-struck and bewildered, with a sense upon them as of a wonder- ful escape, from the sinuous and beetling mountain passes through which they had followed at a venture the bounding, tumbling Indus where, with a sharp southward bend, the river for which a continent is named, digs and breaks its rocky bed out of gloom and wildness, into a region of sunlight and peaceful plains. 4. It was the Penjab. A land of many rivers and broad valleys, of mountains grading down into hills, wooded, forest-clad, of moderate clime and ever-bearing soil. It had everything to invite set- tlers — and to keep them a long, long time, even to isolation. For a glance at the map will show that this garden in the shape of a corner or triangle, while fenced from the outer world on two sides by a well- nigh impassable barrier, is on the third side separated from its own continent by a wide belt of desert ; and its wonderful system of rivers is entirely its own ; their course, — with the exception of the giant, Indus, — begins and ends within its limits. Five bountiful streams descend from various points of extreme Western Himalaya, their courses converging, uniting by twos, now here, now there, until their waters blend into one short but wide, deep, and rapid river which has always borne the collective name Pantchanada, " The Five Rivers " — a name which was transferred, unaltered, to the land itself, and of THE VEDAS. \OJ which " Penjab " is the Persian form.* The Indus, the while, has been gathering volume and swiftness all by itself, without any contributions from affluents, of which it receives only a few inconsiderable ones in the upper portion of its course before it emerges into the open land. It advances, solitary, majestic, to where the Pantchanada brings it the united trib- ute of " The Five," and then rolls down towards the sea, such a mighty, often storm-tossed, mass of waters, that the early poets habitually described it by that very name, — Saunidra — which they used for the accumulation of atmospheric moisture in the shape of rain-clouds — the celestial ocean— and which was given later to the sea itself when the Aryas from the Penjab, probably by navigation down the Indus, reached at last the Indian Ocean. 5. There is a name under which the land we know as Penjab was even more widely designated both in the early or Vedic, and the later, so-called ' The five rivers can show up between them about five times as many names, which, to a beginner, is confusing. Their modern names are different from those of the Epic Brahmanic period, wliile the very oldest have been discovered in the Vedic literature of a re- moter era still. Then the Greeks, who knew this portion of India tolerably well, had their own names for them, with a slight assonance to the native ones. The list begins with the westernmost, modern Jhelum, the Epic and Vedic Vitasta, of which the Greeks made Hydaspes ; next comes Vedic AsiKNt, Greek AkesIiNOS, now TcHENAB ; these two unite and for a considerable distance flow on in one stream of double volume and rapid current, as indicated by the picturesque Vedic name Marudvridha, " The Wind-Swelled " ; its later Sanskrit name, Tchandrabhaga, hellenized into Sandro- phagus, it still retains. There is a pretty story of this river having set a term to Macedonian Alexander's Indian campaign ; its Greek I08 VEDIC INDIA. Classic periods: it is Sapta-Sindhavah, — "the Seven Rivers." This is the Hapta-Hendu of the Eranians, — the land mentioned in the famous geo- graphical chapter of the Avesta among the earliest creations of Ahura-Mazda, and in the rock-inscription on the tomb of Dareios I. in the list of the Persian Empire's tributary provinces. It is, indeed, a far more correctly descriptive name, as it takes due count of the Indus, — the SiNDH of Indian antiquity' — and includes a seventh river, of high and even sacred legendary fame, the Sarasvati, which may be described as the eastern boundary of this first Aryan dominion in India, since it skirts the edge of the Indian desert already mentioned. That river has, in the course of ages, undergone some rather peculiar changes. It springs from the western slopes of the slight watershed which divides the river- system of the Penjab and the Indian Ocean from name meaning " Devourer of Alexander," the conqueror is said to have accepted it as an evil omen and decided on returning. The modern RAvt or Iroti is easily recognized in the Epic IravatI, but not in the Vedic ParushnI or the Greek Hydraotes, while both ShuiudrI and the later Shatadr& are little altered in the Greek Zadadres, and leave a slightly reminiscent sound in the modern SuTLEDj ; just as in the name of the Viyas or Bias there is a faint echo of the Vedic Vipasa, transparently hellenized into HvPAsis, HvPANis, or, closer still, ViPAsis. Of th^ five, the Sutledj is by far the most considerable, in length and volume, and the most fre- quently mentioned — almost as the Indus' twin sister river ; "Indus and Sutledj " go together just as "Ganges and Djumna," the two leaders of the other twin system, that of the Gulf of Bengal. ^ "Sindh" means " River." This is another instance of a coun- try's principal stream being styled by the inhabitants "The River" par excellence. THE VEDAS. IO9 that of Eastern Hindustan and the Gulf of Bengal, and used to accomplish its travels in the customary manner, and end them in the Indus, as indicated on the map by the punctured line which designates its original course. But the Sarasvati does not seem to have had the vigor of its sister- rivers. Perhaps from scantness of water at the start, or from the spongy nature of the soil which, being dry and sandy, absorbed too, much of its volume — be it as it may, its waters gave out, and at some time it stopped midway and got lost in the sands of the desert. This must have happened already at a very early period, for quite ancient manuscripts mentioned the place as a landmark, observing that such or such a locality is distant so or so many days' march from where the Sarasvati disappears into the ground. What is left of it is now known, in its upper course, as the Sarsuti, and, lower down, it changes its name to Gharghar. At the present time it has no importance save that which it derives from old poetic and legendary associations and from having been one of the original " Seven Rivers " that graced and nourished the first Aryan settlements in the land — "the Seven Sisters," or "the Seven Mothers," as the ancient bards often gratefully and prettily addressed them in their songs. 6. A people's life and pursuits were mapped out for it in such a country: agriculture and cattle- breeding — the cornfield and the pasture, the barn and the dairy, together with the few simple auxiliary crafts which make primitive farming self-sufficing — pottery, carpentering, hide-tanning, spinning, and 112 VEDIC INDIA. weaving, — these were the departments which claimed nearly the whole attention of the Aryan settlers, the joint and divided labor of their men and women. It would have been strange if the many wide and deep rivers had not encouraged boat-building, even ship-building and navigation ; so that, while the gen- eral formation of the land, divided by intersecting mountain spurs into countless valleys, favored the establishment of separate and independent tribes, the many easy ways of communication fostered neighborly intercourse, and laid the beginnings of commerce. These almost ideal conditions for a nation's development, moreover, though full of the promise of great prosperity, did not in the least dis- pose it to indolence or effeminacy. For, generous as was the soil, it repaid labor, but would not, like many tropical zones and isles, support the human race in idleness ; balmy as was the climate part of the year, it was not enervating, and winter, snow-clad, was a yearly visitant. Then there were wild animals, especially wolves and bears, to be kept at bay. Last but not least, ample scope was afforded these first Aryas of India for the development of manly and even warlike qualities by their position in a land which they had occupied and held in defiance of a brave and numerous native population who kept up armed resistance probably for centuries, and receded or submitted only step by step. Not for several hundred years did this conquering coloni- zation, pushing slowly eastward, cross the watershed and enter the valley of the Ganges. 7. The natives, whom the Aryas for a long time THE VEDAS. II3 gathered under the general Old-Aryan designation of Dasyu,' belonged to a black, or at least a very dark race, and everything about them, from their color and flat noses, to their barbarous customs, such as eating raw or barely cooked meat, and their Shaman- istic goblin-worship,^ was intensely repulsive to the handsome, gentler mannered and, to a certain degree, religiously refined and lofty-minded Aryas, who strenuously kept away from them and were especially intent on avoiding the moral contamination of asso- ciation with them precisely in matters of religion and of worship. There is every reason to believe that this spirit of fastidious exclusiveness was the occasion of their collecting and ordering into one body the hymns and sacred songs embodying the religion they brought with them, and which probably had not yet at that early period assumed the finished poetic form under which it has at last descended to us. This work was accomplished by a number of specially gifted men, poets and priests both, the RiSHlS of India's oldest and sacred litera- ture, at more or less long intervals and at different periods, ranging over certainly the whole of five hundred years, probably much more. The result is the collection known as the Rig-Veda, — "the Veda of praise or of hymns,"— or, to give the full title : the Rig-Veda-Samtiita. ' Meaning simply "peoples," "tribes"; a meaning which the word, under the Eranian form Dahyu, retains all through the Avesta and the Akhaemenian inscriptions, while in India it soon underwent peculiar changes, as will be seen. '^ See Story of Chaldea, p. 180, and the chapter " Turanian Chaldea" generally. 114 VEDIC INDIA. 8. The word sainJiitd means " collection." It is here used to denote the collection of original MAN- TRAS (hymns, sacred texts)/ 1028 in number, which compose the Rig-Veda, free of all additions in the way of explanations, commentaries, and the like. This is, without the shadow of a doubt, the oldest book of t lie Aryan family of nations, — in contents if not in actual tangible shape, for writing did not come into use for centuries after even the latest of the Rig-hymns had finally assumed the poetical garb in which they have come down to us, and which cannot have been later than 1000 B.C., while it was probabl)^ much earlier. And when close study of the hymns has given us the training necessary to discern, from intrinsic evidence of language and matter, the oldest portions even of this stupendous collection, — most probably about 1500 B.C. and rather earlier than later, — we are forced to the admission (for which, however, we are not un- prepared, having already had glimpses, beyond the Indo-Eranian period, of a primeval or Proto-Aryan era)^ that many, both of the words and the con- ceptions that confront us there, already mark a secondary stage of development and are the result of historical growth. 9. The earliest religious life of the Penjab Arya and its outer forms, as they can still faintly be traced here and there through the later complications of ' An old Indo-Eranian word, familiar to us under the Eranian form Manthra from the Avesta. (See Slory of Media, etc., pp. 30, 49, 86.) * See Story of Media, etc., p. 37. . THE VEDAS. II5 the Rig-Veda, are beautifully simple — almost entirely family worship. The head of the household is also its spiritual representative and leader ; he lights the flame of the daily sacrifice, which he feeds with the simple offering of melted butter and cakes, singing the appropriate hymns. But this latter feature already contained the germ of a much more artificial state of things. What were appropriate hymns? The selection implies a form, a ritual. The 1028 songs are divided into ten separate books or collec- tions (mandalas) some of them subdivided into smaller groups, the authorship (more probably com- pilation) of each being ascribed to some particularly renowned saintly poet-priest — Rishi — of olden times. The historical authenticity of these names is of course more than doubtful, as they became, in the course of time, encrusted with such a growth of myth and legend as to leave almost no loophole for anything like sober, reasonable conjecture. On the whole, it may be assumed, with no small degree of prob- ability, that behind these names would be found not only individuals, but also whole families in suc- cessive generations, in which both priesthood and poetic gifts were hereditary. It is these families who will have made the selections and gradually estab- lished the more and more systematized forms of worship which, by the time the Aryan conquest and colonization had, in their steady eastward pro- gress, reached the valleys of the Upper Ganga and Yamuna, had expanded into the most elaborate and intricate ritual and sacrificial ceremonial the world has ever known, in the hands of an exclusive and 1 1 6 VEDIC INDIA. privileged priesthood, who, under their final name of Brahmans, had in the interval grown into that all-powerful caste, which, for nearly thirty centuries, has held India prostrate — the most perfect theocracy of any land or age, possibly rivalled only by the Egyptian. lO. Where there is a liturgy, there needs must be prayer-books. Such was the origin and such the use of two other sanihitds or collections included among the sacred books under the titles of YajuR- Veda and Sama-Veda. Both consist of hymns and fragments of hymns {mantras, " texts") taken out of the Rig, and arranged in a certain order so as to accompany each action and incident of any given religious service, and especially sacrifices — these lat- ter in particular having become so numerous and varied as to require the ministrations of a great many priests, — on solemn occasions as many as seven- teen, — of unequal rank and having entirely different, very strictly prescribed and limited duties. Some are to mutter their mantras, some to recite them rapidly and moderately loud, others to intone, and others again to sing them. The mantras of the Saman, which can be traced to the Rig with a very few exceptions — 78 out of 1 549 — are all to be chanted. Those of the Yajur mostly come from the same source, but are interspersed with passages in prose, containing explanations and directions for the guid- ance of the priests who make use of this liturgical manual.' They are grouped in two uneven halves ' These explanatory interpolations are thought to be the oldest existing specimens of Aryan or Indo-European prose-writing. THE VEDAS. II7 or parts — the " Black Yaju " (Taittiriya Samhita) and the "White Yaju " (VAjASANEYA Samhita) — an arrangement insufficiently accounted for by a very grotesque legend. II. For a long time these three SaniJiitds — the Rig, the Yaju, and the Saman — the bulk of them in reality reducible to only one, the Rig,' — formed the entire body of sacred lore, under the collective title of Traividya, /. e., " the threefold Veda," or " the threefold knowledge." It was only at a consider- ably later period, for which no precise date can be suggested, that a fourth one was incorporated in the sacred canon — the Atharya-Veda. It mayC therefore, in one way, be called a comparatively modern addition. Yet in another it may probably lay claim, at least in part, to a higher antiquity than even the Rig-hymns. Nothing could well be imagined more different in contents and more oppo- site in spirit than these two samJiitds. That of the Atharvan contains a comparatively small number of mantras from the Rig, and those only from the por- tions unanimously recognized as the latest, while the bulk of the collection along with some original hymns of the same kind and, in many cases, of great poetic beauty, consists chiefly of incantations, spells, exorcisms. We have here, as though in opposition to the bright, cheerful pantheon of beneficent deities, so trustingly and gratefully addressed by the Rishis of the Rig, a weird, repulsive world of darkly scowl- ing demons, inspiring abject fear, such as never ^ The Yajur-Veda contains some original matter, which has been found to be not later than the Rig. I 1 8 VEDIC INDIA. sprang from Aryan fancy. We find ourselves in the midst of a goblin-worship, the exact counterpart of that with which we became familiar in Turanian Chaldea.' Every evil thing in nature, from a drought to a fever or bad qualities of the human heart, is per- sonified and made the object of terror-stricken pro- pitiation, or of attempts at circumvention through witchcraft, or the instrument of harm to others through the same compelling force. Here as there, worship takes the form of conjuring, not prayer; its ministers are sorcerers, not priests. The conclu- sion almost forces itself on us, that this collection represents the religion of the native races, who, through a compromise dictated by policy after a long period of struggle, ending in submission, obtained for it partial recognition from the conquering and every way superior race. It is easy to see how the latter, while condescending to incorporate the long abhorred ritual into their own canonical books, prob- ably at first in some subordinate capacity, would, so to speak, sanctify or purify it, by supplementing it with some new hymns of their own, addressed to the same deities as those of the Rig and breathing the same spirit.^ If, as is more than probable, this is the history of the fourth Veda, the manner of its creation justifies the seemingly paradoxical assertion that it is ^ See Story of Ckaldea, chapter iii., "Turanian Chaldea," especially pp. 153-170. ^ We have seen something of the kind in the fusion of the old Shamanism of Turanian Chaldea with the nobler religion of the Semitic priestly rulers, actuated most probably by a similar policy of conciliation. — See Story of Chaldea, pp. 174-179, and especially pp. 235-237. THE VEDAS. 119 at once the most modern of the four, and, in portions, more ancient than even the oldest parts of the Rig- Veda. As a samhitd, it is a manifestly late produc- tion, since it bears evidence of having been in use in the valleys of the Ganga and the Yamuna ; but the portions which embody an originally non-Aryan religion are evidently anterior to Aryan occupation. 12. It would be a mistake to suppose that the mantras of the Yajur and the Saman are reproduced from the Rig-Veda with absolutely literal accuracy. Indeed this is far from being the case, and although there never is any difficulty in identifying the texts, a careful collation of them shows many, at times quite considerable, discrepancies. This fact is very easily accounted for. The oldest known manuscripts of the Rig- Veda do not date back much earlier than 1500 A.D. Yet, two thousand years before that, about 600 B.C., the study of it, exclusively pursued in several theological schools, by the simple but arduous process of memorizing, was so accurate and minute that, with a view to establish the text and prevent interpolations, every verse, word, and syllable had been counted. From treatises written at that period we learn that the number of the words is 153,826, that of the syllables 432,000, while that of the verses is differently computed and varies from 10,402 to 10,622. Now it is quite possible, as every- one may find out by trying on a passage of either prose or verse, to alter a quotation, without materi- ally injuring the sense, by changing some of the words and substituting others of the same length, so that the ear will detect no difference. Indeed this 120 VEDIC INDIA. ■ often happens when quotations are made from memory. How easily would such corruptions occur where there was no written standard of the canonical text to check and correct them ! The wonder — a great, standing wonder — is that the text was pre- served so unimpaired, on the whole and in detail. But where deviations did occur, of course each par- ticular school would not admit them, but stood by its own text as being the only pure one, and thus it came to pass that we have several versions of the Rig- Veda slightly differing in details. Furthermore, when the Rig mantras were arranged in liturgical order as prayer-books or sacrificial manuals for the priests, the compilers might slightly adapt them to this or that action of the ritual, and all these causes more than account for the divergences in the samhitds of the Yajur-Veda and the Sama-Veda. 13. To be studied with such exceeding care, to have its every syllable numbered and treasured as so many crumbs of gold, a book must needs be, not only sacred, but old. The fear of losing some of the spiritual wealth is closely followed by that of losing the full appreciation of it — of ceasing to understand it. Then begins the period of commentaries. Every- thing has to be explained. The language has be- come antiquated. The poetic metres — very rich and varied in the Rig-Veda — are out of use, and must be studied laboriously as we study those of our dead languages. Allusions to once familiar things are no longer understood. Myths are lost track of ; their true meaning is forgot. Names that once were house- hold words and told their own tale, have become THE VEDAS. 121 empty sounds. In short, times have changed and the thread is broken. On the other hand, these new times must be anchored on to the old. All these new things — new notions, new customs, new laws, new rites, new social conditions — must be accounted for, justified, consecrated by the old, now almost unintelligible, for these are the sole, universally acknowledged, holy fountain-head of the entire na- tional life — social and spiritual. It will be easily seen what a feat of intellectual gymnastics such a task must have been, nor will it be wondered at that there was enough of it to keep several generations of priestly specialists occupied. The beginning was made with the prose passages intermixed with the mantras of the Yajur-Veda, and which converted that compilation into a manual for uses that had not been contemplated by the old Rishis, but had gradu- ally grown out of sundry slender roots which twined their nearly invisible threads below the bare surface of the ancient simple worship. 14. Such was the origin and purport of the numer- ous theological works which, under the name of BrAhmanas (composed by Brahmans and for the use of Brahmans), formed the staple literature of the Aryan Hindus through several centuries, belonging as distinctively to the second stage of their estab- lishment in the northern half of the Himalayan continent, that gravitating around the Upper Ganga and Yamuna, as the early portions of the Rig- Veda belonged to the first stage, with the Sindh for the main artery of their material life. In this way the Brahmanas mark the transition from Vedic culture 122 VEDIC INDIA. to the later Brahmanic social order and modes of thought — indeed help to bring on that transition, some evidently belonging to the beginning, others to the end of that intercalary period. 15. As was but natural, this work gave rise to numerous theological schools, each of which jealously guarded and handed down its own version of this or that Brahmana, just as was the case with the Vedas themselves. This of course materially increases the difficulties that beset our students, especially when one remembers that each of the four Vedas had several Brahmanas attached to it. Many are lost, or not yet found, but it is doubtful whether they would add much valuable knowledge to that im- parted by those which are open to our inspection, the survivors naturally being the most important and popular works. Perhaps the most interesting portion of each Brahmana is the appendix with which each is supplied, under the title of Aranyaka • — " belonging to the forest " — for the use of such Brahmans as had retired from the world into forest hermitages, to spend there a few quiet years, or the latter end of their lives. Four Aranyakas are known to us. 16. As already remarked elsewhere, all religions that have sacred books, and, in consequence, an im- mutable canon of law and belief, claim for them a superhuman origin.' They are to be accepted, obeyed, believed in, as being supernaturally dictated or re- vealed to their human authors by the Deity. The body of Scriptures which the Hindus gather under ^ See Story of Media, etc., pp, 17-19. THE VEDAS. 12$ this head is unusually large, as it comprises not only the mantras of the Vedas but the whole of the Brah- manas, including the philosophical Upanishads. They call it ShrUTI, " what was heard," in opposition to Smriti or " what was remembered," — only remem- bered, and therefore liable to error, to be respected as invested with a sort of secondary sacredness, but not necessarily and implicitly believed, as a matter of salvation. All the law books, including the great code of Manu, are Smriti, so are the Itihasas (see p. 94), the Puranas (95), and another important class, of which anon. It would seem to the unbiassed mind as though the Rig-Veda alone, being the corner-stone and fountain-head of India's entire spiritual life, would be entitled to be enshrined in it as Shriiti — revealed, repeated from "what was heard " by the Rishis who were the chosen vessels and instruments of the divine message to men. This would be logical, but would not have suited the Brahmans at all. This most ambitious and crafty of all priesthoods made such exorbitant, nay monstrous demands on the credulity, docil- ity, and liberality of the people over which they claimed — though they may never have quite estab- lished — absolute power, both spiritual and temporal, that not even such a contemplative, indolent, physi- cally enervated race as the once vigorous Aryas were changed into by a long sojourn amid the relaxing, debilitating influences of semJ-tropical Eastern Hindustan, would have submitted to them tamely and unresistingly, had they not become imbued with the conviction that they were obeying 124 VEDIC INDIA. the will of Heaven. Now all these things that the Brahmans claimed for themselves were not in the Rig- Veda, — to begin with the claim to revelation itself, which the old poets did not put forth for their hymns, of which, indeed, they emphatically speak as their own creation, boasting that they made this or that new song, " as the carpenter fashions a wagon." It had all to be spun out of embryonic hints con- tained in scattered texts, meanings made out, twisted, and made to fit where needed. The text was \ nothing, the interpretation was everything. This 1 was supplied by the Brahmanas, and so it came to ( pass that a huge body of literature — larger than we even yet can realize, since many Brahmanas have been lost or not yet found — by a host of authors, of a score of different theological schools, and ranging over between five and eight hundred years, was enveloped in one shroud of mystery and sacredness and labelled Shruti, '' Revealed." Of course such a high-handed proceeding could not but give rise to contradictions and glaring inconsistencies. Thus, the Brahmanas are continually referred to by the names of their authors or at least schools, and spoken of as " old " or " new," which is downright heresy, as SJiriiti can, properly speaking, be neither old nor new, having pre-existed, unaltered, through all eternity. But theological casuistry will thread its way out of worse difficulties. 17. .S?;zr?Vz, — which might be comprehensively paraphrased by " venerable tradition " — embraces a vast range of subjects and of time, as we have seen. But there is one set of literary productions of this THE VEDAS. 12$ extensive class which specially belongs to the Vedas, and supplements the Brahmanas and Upanishads. They are manuals on certain principal subject-mat- ters connected with and partly contained in them and which go to the making of the perfect Vedic lore required of every Brahman. These subject- matters are six in number, and, by their nature, show the kind and minuteness of the study to which the Veda — especially the Rig-Veda of course — has been subjected from very early times. They come under the following heads : / I. Phonetics (pronunciation and accentuation), — / SiKSHA. j 2. Metre — Chhandas. / 3. Grammar — Vyakarana. / 4. Explanation of words (etymology, homonyms, \ and the like) — NiRUKTA. 5. Astronomy — JYOTISHA. 6. Ceremonial — Kalpa. \^ An exhaustive knowledge of these six things is considered so essential to a full understanding of the Veda and the proper idea of the infinitely com- plicated forms of worship evolved out of the Rig, that they are said to belong to it organically as members to a body, and are very realistically called 1 Vedangas, " limbs of the Veda," as necessary to its articulate perfection. 18. It follows from this that, in speaking of " the six Vedangas " we do not mean six distinct books or treatises, as is sometimes superficially concluded, but six subject-matters which are contained in the Veda as part of its substance and which are to be abstracted 126 Vedic India. thereout and developed for purposes of study. We continually apply a similar process to Homer, or to Shakespeare. We might just as well speak of Homeric accentuation, Homeric metre, Homeric grammar, Homeric mythology, Homeric astronomy, Homeric worship, and say that these six subjects or studies are " the pillars of Homeric scholarship." It further follows that, if there were six Vedangas, the numbers of works or manuals treating of them could multiply indefinitely — which is just what did happen. One feature, however, was common to all these works ; as they were only meant to specialize and epitomize knowledge which for the most part was already scattered, in a loose and desultory form, through the Brahmanas, they were compiled in short paragraphs or aphorisms compact and con- cise — a sort of telegraphic memorandum style, — in which brevity often degenerates into obscurity and at times into an almost unintelligible jargon, that provides enough hard nuts to crack for a few more generations of special students. These collec- tions are called Sutras, literally " strung together," or rather " sewn together," from the root siv or syii, "to sew." ^ 19. The Hindu scholars must have found this epitomic hand-book style particularly convenient and helpful to the memory, for they applied it to many other than specially Vedic subjects : law, phi- losophy, medicine, crafts. These subjects belonging to the " remembered " or "traditional " half of classi- ' Sometimes the Sutras are comprised under the term " Ve- danga." THE VEDAS. 12/ cal literature, Smriti, the Sutras that treat of them are designated as Smarta-Sutras, to distinguish them from those that treat of matters connected with " revelation," or " what was heard," ' Shruti, and which go by the general name of Shrauta- StJTRAS. Of these, as of Brahmanas, there are several sets annexed to each Veda, and they embrace a large variety of subjects, minute subdivisions of the gen- eral matter classed under the headings of the Vedan- gas, till we actually find a set of Sutras on the art of adapting the words of the sacred hymns to music. It may be confidently asserted that India is the only country in the world where grammar, prosody, versi- fication, are a portion of the nation's sacred litera- ture, and indeed partly of its revealed scriptures, since the bulk of the material worked over by the Sutra-compilers in their peculiar style, is really found in the Brahmanas and, in one case, in the Veda itself — meaning the prose portions of the Yajur- Veda. However incongruous and almost grotesque this may appear at the first glance, if unexplained, it becomes quite logically intelligible when the connection is made plain and pursued from the start. 20. The sacredness attaching to these branches of ' It is quite natural that revelation should be conceived of as com- ing through the sense of hearing in an age so much anterior to writing, and even later, vv'hen, preferably and on principle, the entire sacred literature vi^as committed by students to memory, being re- ceived orally from the teacher's lips. Yet, curiously enough, parts of Shriiti are usually spoken of as seen. Thus a certain Rishi is said to have seen certain hymns of the Rig- Veda which have come down under his name. 128 VEDIC INDIA. study, usually considered as emphatically a part of the layman's education, accounts for the extraordinary pains and care early bestowed on them, and which culminated in the most elaborate, profound, subtle, and finished investigations of language ever achieved by any people. It will be noticed that such questions make up four out of the six Vedangas : Phonetics, Metre (or versification and prosody). Etymology (comprising homonyms and synonyms), and Gram- mar proper. In the intricate system of sacrificial rites, based on forms pure and simple, into which the once beautiful Vedic worship quickly and surely de- generated, one misplaced accent, one mis-pronounced word, one falsely given quantity, was supposed not only to destroy the beneficial virtue of a sacrifice, but actually to turn it against the sacrificer. Yet how easy to commit such a slip when using only half intelligible words and forms in a language which, from being at all times a more or less artificial, literary idiom, was fast coming to be a dead one ! What wonder then if nice points of grammar and prosody became of vital importance, and exercised for centuries the choicest faculties, the unremitting efforts of the national intellect ; if each theological school fiercely vindicated and clung to its own version of a pas- sage — nay, its own pronunciation, its own accentua- tion of this or that word, producing a long and varied series of scientifically elaborated treatises (Sutras), the larger number of which, judging from quotations in those that were preserved, have evi- dently been lost, only the best having survived the natural selection of unwritten literature, the produc- THE VEDAS. 1 29 tions of which must stand or fall exclusively on their own merits. 21. We have now arrived at the end of a survey, not incomplete, if necessarily brief, of what can, in the stricter sense, be called Vedic Literature. In a wider sense, all the literature of India may, theo- retically, be said to come under that head, since the Veda — the Rig-Veda in the last instance — per- vades and dominates her spiritual life, even as her own Himalaya sways and regulates the conditions of her material existence. But the special and distinc- tive Vedic literature is that which follows directly from the Veda and revolves around it, treating only of such matters as it either contains or suggests. It naturally falls into three very obvious main divisions : I, the Mantra period — the period of collecting the songs with no special object beyond that of preserv- ing them ; 2, the Brahmana period — the period of commentary and a certain amount of exegesis, with the patent object of establishing the supremacy of the Brahman caste ; 3, the Sutra period — the period of concise special treatises for practical use at school and sacrifice. Chronologically, these periods do not strictly succeed one another, any more than the so- called culture ages — of stone, of brass, of iron — but overlap both ways over and over. Thus, if the second period corresponds to a well-defined stage of the Aryas' conquest of India — that of their advance eastward and their establishment in the valleys of the Ganga and Yamuna — the third may be said to straggle down actually into modern times, since the monumental commentary on the Rig-Veda, 130 VEDIC INDIA, the Brahmans' standard authority, was written by SAyana as late as the fourteenth century of our era.* ' Panini's no less monumental grammar, though a much earlier work (4th cent. B.C.), and by its subject belonging to the Vedangas, can hardly be classed under strictly Vedic literature, for the language which he found and dissected with an acumen and thoroughness un- rivalled even by Greek grammarians, is not that of the Veda at all, and Vedic forms of speech are studied by him as curious philological relics. s ^^^ ^i F®i ^^r^^^^f'-^aiv^^ Ar^ Ifc^^^P^^a^ ^^ ^^pi w^^^^S^ i^^gj^l *^^ ^^:^ \Ki^*>^^Fj,^r3S?i!^^^Ji ^^^S ^^ J jfoP^^^/^'iRSSsO- y^^^^^^ Nwt^S;^ ^^^vri^f^V'*^^^^^^ ^^K«^ fvM^l. ^y^^F^T^'^ fc^^^j^Y* "vS^ kV^ ^,^I3^\ m 1^ S w ^1. ^^^^^M 01 te ^^S ^^^ '^^g^ ^^^^^^^^ft ^m CHAPTER V. THE RIG-VEDA : THE OLDER GODS. I. When we prepare to investigate one of the world's great religions, and before we enter on an analytical study of details, we naturally incline, in our desire to feel firm ground under our feet, to ask the preliminary question : What is its character? in what category should it be classed ? to what division of the spiritual world does it belong? Polytheism? Pantheism? Animism? or what other? When it is the Rig-Veda into which we are about to plunge, we doubly feel the need of some such guiding thread, some anchor to rest upon, for its 1028 hymns, bris- tling with names and -allusions, produce, on a first perusal, a labyrinthine, chaotic, wholly bewildering impression. But alas, a direct, plain answer to such a question is seldom, if ever, possible, and, in the case of the Rig-Veda, perhaps a little less so than in that of any other analogous spiritual document. The growth of a long series of centuries, elaborated in many million busy, subtle brains, containing a great race's spiritual food for as many centuries to come and materials for endless transformations, could not 131 132 VEDIC INDIA. possibly be so simple and transparent a thing as to admit of a sweeping definition in one word. The study of the Zend-Avesta showed us how many va- ried elements, and how intricately stratified, go to the making of a great national religion. The same unconscious work of time and influences confronts us in the Veda, but by so much more many-sided and complicated by how much the contemplative, introspective character which the Aryas developed in India is more involved and self-absorbed than that of their sternly simple, active, and hardy Eranian brethren. 2. Let us, however, attempt to answer the ques- tion with which we began the present chapter, just to see how far and deep it will carry us. Even a cursory first study of our text will establish the fol- lowing points : A great many gods are named and invoked in the Rig-Veda; consequently, the religion it embodies is decidedly POLYTHEISTIC ; the spirits of deceased ancestors come in for a large share of honor and worship, so that ANIMISM may be said to be a conspicuous feature of it ; an early tendency to view the deity as pervading the universe, both as a whole and in its minutest parts, animate or inani- mate — a view exhaustively expressed in such words as these : " He whose loins the seas are " is also "contained in this drop of water" — early reveals a strong attraction towards PANTHEISM ; while many are the passages which explicitly inform us that the various gods are only different names of " that which is One "—more than hinting at a dim, underlying MONOTHEISM. There is no doubt that the purer and THE OLDER GODS. 1 33 more abstract conceptions could be traced to the later of the many centuries which it took to evolve the Rig-Veda in its final form, if we but had a sure key to its chronology ; as it is, we have only, as in the Avesta, the internal evidence that goes so far in the hands of trained criticism, to support and guide our impressions, our conjectures. But one thing ap- pears sure: Vedic religion at no time, until opened to alien and grosser influences, was idolatrous. In this respect the Aryas of India were in no wise behind their brethren of Eran : nature was their temple ; they did not invite the deity to dwell in houses of men's building, and if, in their poetical effusions, they described their Devas in human form and with fanciful symbolical attributions, thereby unavoidably falling into anthropomorphism, they do not seem to have transferred it into reproductions more materi- ally tangible than the spoken word — into the eidolon (portraiture, — of limner's, sculptor's, or potter's hand) — which becomes the idol. 3. And if the Rig-Veda may be shown to contain the germs of most of the religions and even philo- sophical systems which subsequently covered the spiritual soil of India with crops of such bewildering luxuriancy, the main character of this book of books, in nearly half its mantras, — answering, no doubt, to the earlier and main period of their composition and collection, — is simple and easy to define ; at this earliest and unalloyed stage, the religion which we see faithfully mirrored in them is NATURALISM, pure and simple, i. e., the worship of the Powers of Nature as Beings, generally beneficent, with only a very 134 VEDIC INDIA. few absolutely Evil Ones, such as Darkness and Drought ; these latter, however, are not worshipped, nor even propitiated, but unconditionally abhorred by men, fought and conquered by the Powers of Good. In this unalloyed naturalism, we can watch the birth of myths and catch it, so to speak, in the act, by the simple proceeding of translating the names of each divine or semi-divine being as it con- fronts us in an invocation or in a bit of story (for long and especially connected and consistent stories are the works of a later, elaborating, and compiling age). We then perceive, to our astonishment, that they are not names at all, but either matter-of-fact common nouns, direct designations of the natural object under consideration, or else a verbal noun ex- pressing some characteristic action of that object — as "the Pounders," "the Howlers," names of the Storm-Winds — or an adjective, a more or less ornate epithet, describing one or other of its characteristic properties or aspects. So that, by merely dismiss- ing the capital initials, we reduce an incipient story — a primary myth containing all the live germs of future poetic and legendary development — into a fanciful, poetical description of a natural phenome- non — like the various stages of the sun's progress, the incidents of a thunderstorm, the dramatic epi- sodes of a drought. Special illustrations of these positions are scarcely needed here, since all the fol- lowing pages will, in a measure, consist of such illustrations. But, before we investigate the Vedic natural pantheon, it may not be amiss to repeat the definition of the word MYTH o-iven in another vol- THE OLDER GODS. 1 35 ume, ' because it should be borne in mind through all the study on which we are entering, and will be found to cover each single case subjected to it. This it is : "y^ myth means simply a phenomenon of nature presented not as the result of a law, but as the act of divine or at least superhuman persons, good or evil pozvers. Reading and practice will show that there are many kinds of myths, but there is none which, if properly taken to pieces, thoroughly traced and cornered, will not be covered by this definition." The beauty of the Vedic myths is that they need no cornering, no taking to pieces, mostly being them- selves embryonic, and resolving themselves, at a touch, back into the natural elements out of which they directly emanated, without as yet materiahzing into any such flesh-and-blood reality as, say, the biography of a Greek god. 4. We shall never know exactly what the inheri- tance was which the Aryas of the Sapta-Sindhavah received from the time — the so-called Indo-Eranian period — before the separation of the two sister races, the original material out of which grew the Rig-Veda. But there are some large primary conceptions in it which clearly confront us in the Zend-Avesta also, and which we are therefore justified in ascribing to the original, primeval Aryas, the ancestors of both. We may be tolerably well assured that so much of these primary conceptions as we can trace in the Rig-Veda unalloyed with elements betokening local Indian conditions and influences, represents the 1 See Story of Chaldea, p. 294, and Ch. VII. (on Myths) generally, which should be carefully re-read. 136 , VEDIC INDIA. earlier stage of the religion which was to become so complicated and manifold. It is not impossible to disentangle these simpler outlines from an intricate aftergrowth, and we are not surprised to find them representing the purest naturalism, with just so much moral consciousness and religious feeling as cannot be absent from the spiritual life of a highly gifted race.' 5. The poets, the thinkers, and contemplatives of all nations have been attracted to what lay beyond the experience and testimony of their material senses, and have conceived the universe as divided into sev- eral " worlds," visible and invisible. Obviously the oldest of such speculations, the starting-point for all subsequent ones, is the conception of " the two worlds" — Heaven and Earth. Many names are given to each in the Rig-Veda, but in their spe- cial connection as a divine couple, who between them and by their union have given life to all creatures and are ever supplying them with the means of pre- serving that life, they are addressed, jointly and in- separably, as Dyaus and Prithivi. The latter name is singularly direct and unimaginative ; it means simply " the Broad," and if it offers any interest, it is from the suggestion of antiquity it contains, since that is scarcely the epithet which would be chosen, out of many, as specially distinc- tive, in a land of towering peaks and steep-sided ridges, and therefore it does not seem too unlikely ^ The chapter on " Aryan Myths" (Ch. III.) in the Story of Media, Babylon, and Persia should by rights be re-perused here, and would undoubtedly prove of great assistance. THE OLDER GODS. 1 37 that the name, as the conception, may have been familiar prior to the Aryan descent into the Penjab, carrying the mind back to the period (Indo-Era- nian ?) of dwelling on flat, boundless plains and steppes. 6. Of far more positive interest and wide-reaching significance is the name of the other divine consort, Heaven — Dyaus. The word means "the_Sky." But this meaning has back of it another, the true original meaning, which shows the word to be only a descrip- tive designation. It comes from the root DIV, " to shine, to be brilliant " — and how could a tropical or semi-tropical sky strike the poetic and artistic eye more characteristically than as " the Shining," " the Brilliant " ? Say " the Shining One " — and the thing is done ; the magic wand has touched the inanimate object, and it has become a beings 2. person, 2. pozver — in classical language, a god. And what a god ! The original universal god of almost all Aryan peoples and such as, in later times, adopted the Aryan speech and, with it, the Aryan traditions and turn of mind. For Vedic Dyaus — and still more in the immemorial association of ideas and words, Dyaushpitar, " Heaven, the Father," is no other than Greek Zeus, ZeuS-PATER, Latin DiES-PITER, Jupiter, then DEUS, " a god," and Christian Deus, God, and lastly our modern DiO, DiOS, DiEU, with all the kindred derivatives from the original San- skrit — and probably Aryan — root : " divus," " divine," and others. The name of Dyaus is, more frequently than that of any other deity, coupled with the epi- thet ASURA, and that alone vouches for the immeas-'^ 138 VEDIC INDIA. urable antiquity of this, probably the most primeval of Aryan cults, since the word Asura, which was originally a designation common to all beneficent Beings, shifted its meaning to the exact opposite, and came to signify evil Beings, — demons or fiends, whose opposition and frequently open warfare against the Powers of light and all good is a standing feature of later Hindu mythology. When the transforma- tion took place is not, of course, to be determined ; but it may be proved to have done so within the span of time covered by the Rig-Veda, for the word occurs in the great collection in both senses, — the favorable one in such passages as are otherwise shown to be- long to the earlier portion. As Asura begins to mean an Evil Power, another word has to be found to designate the Good Powers generally, and that word is Deva, coined out of the same root which gave the name of the oldest Aryan god. So the Aryas of India first spoke of their " Bright Ones " in a general way, then the notion and word both hardened and crystallized into the special meaning which w^e attach to the word " gods." The Eranian sister race, in the meantime, retained Asura (Eranian " Ahura ") in its original meaning, which Zara- thushtra and his followers intensified and sanctified by making it an integral part of the name of the Most Holy himself, the supreme and only Lord, Ahura-Mazda, while the word '' deva," doubtless to show their abhorrence of their former brethren's polytheistic tendencies, was degraded into the desig- nation of the fiends — the " Daevas " of the Avesta, the " Divs " of later Persian spirit lore — the servants TffE OLDER GODS. 1 39 of the Evil One, Angra-Mainyush. The coincidences and divergences are too pointed and systematic to be casual, and give almost decisive weight to the hypothesis that religious antagonism was not foreign to the — probably late — separation of the Indo-Era- nian family, which seems to have remained united longest of all the branches of the original Aryan stock. 7. Every natural object fills more than one part or function in the economy of the universe, has more than one quality or aspect wherewith to strike an observer — a variety easily expressed in speech by a number of adjectives and verbs or verbal nouns. If that observer be poetically inclined and therefore subject to moods, he will scarcely be disposed coolly to enumerate all these qualities and actions, produ- cing a sort of dry descriptive litany ; he will be more specially struck, according to the mood of a given moment, by this or that particular aspect of the ob- ject of his contemplation ; he will let his fancy dwell on that aspect, suffer himself to be entirely possessed by it, and develop it in his song to the exclusion of all others, until the reflection in his poet's soul is rendered tangible in form to his fellow-men, and becomes, although unsubstantial, a perfect, indelible creation. And what is this creation, seen first by the poet in his mind's eye, then by his cunning word made visible to the world ? heard first by him in his mind's ear, then poured by his cunning metre into music for all ? this creation first revealed to him in that semi-trance of the soul, when the poet is lifted into a world which is not that of every day and where voices speak to I40 VEDIC INDIA. him and visions come to him he knows not how? Is it a song? a picture ? it is all that and more : it is a god. What he has seen and heard, and rendered, is so complete, so real that he is the first to forget that what he started from was really only one of many aspects or qualities belonging to an already familiar ■ deity (divinized natural object, or power), and lo ! the magic wand of language wielded by fancy has done its work, as the epithet or noun becomes a name, the quality or action it expresses becomes a person, and where tJiere luas one god, there now are tzvo, henceforth imagined and worshipped distinctly and separately, in total forgetfulness of their original identity. And what was a poetical description of certain attribu- tions, certain effects, becomes the god's personal his- tory, the story of his adventures. 8. This is the way that gods — and myths — are born. And nowhere can the process be caught in the act, so to speak, as in the Rig- Veda, where poetical creation often hovers so closely over the boundary line between reality and myth as to make it doubtful to which it finally belongs. And no apter illustration of the process can we have than in the person of the other Sky-god, Varuna, who, from a simple attribution, rose to be perhaps the sublimest figure of the Vedic pantheon. All an- cient peoples used to say that " the heavens cover or encompass the earth and all it contains," some- times adding " like a tent " or "like a roof" — and meant it literally, not metaphorically, for to their unscientific minds, which knew nothing of optical delusions, but accepted unquestioningly the impres- THE OLDER GODS. I4I sions conveyed to them by their senses, the blue vault zvas a blue vault, solid and immutable — nay the very type of solidity and immutability, a veri- table _^rw2ament — a designation, by the by, which shows how words will survive exploded notions (like the rising and setting of the sun) and sometimes perpetuate in the popular mind the errors which gave them birth. Now Sanskrit has a root VRI " to cover," — a prolific one, which can be traced in many words of kindred meanings, — and one of its most direct formations is this very name of Varuna. It is as though we called the sky " the coverer, the enfolder," and indeed there would be nothing amiss with .any one of our modern poets referring to " the all-cover- ing, enfolding heavens." Only, we would admire the line as a beautiful, picturesque bit of imagery, but it would not crystallize in our minds into a person and a name (even setting apart the impossibility of such a thing on religious grounds) ; that is a faculty specially belonging to those remote ages of the world's youth, which have on that account been nick- named '' the mythopceic,'' i. e., " myth-making," ages — a faculty which could grow only out of an exuber- ant fancy, revelling in the novelty of things, unre- strained by knowledge, and therefore ready of belief. It must be well understood, however, that things went thus at the very beginning (whenever the begin- ning was), but that habit and routine soon asserted their deadening influence, and that what had been play of poetical fancy, then effusion of faith, settled into conventional form of speech, into stereotype phrase. It is, unfortunately, at this stage, further stiffened by 142 VEDIC INDIA. set forms of worship, that the unconscious creations of the myth-makers generally reach us, even in the earliest monuments in our possession, and we cannot, there- fore, be sufficiently grateful for such stray glimpses into the earliest workings of the myth-making brain as the Rig- Veda — and that alone — still occasionally affords. 9. But — to return to Varuna. Scattered through the Rig- Veda are several hymns indited specially in his honor, sometimes alone, oftener in connection with some other god. In Book VIL, attributed to the legendary Rishi Vasishtha, and at all events pre- served and used as a sacred heirloom by the priestly family of that name, these hymns are most numerous. They abound with short descriptive invocations and passages which, if pieced together, would give a very lifelike presentation of the god with all his direct and personal physical attributions and, what is still more interesting, his connection with sundry natural phenomena that cannot possibly be dissociated from the sky in its several aspects. The fundamental idea expressed by Varuna's name (as explained above) is distinctly traceable in many of these pas- sages, but in none so much as in the following three, which may be said to contain a paraphrase or ampli- fication of the name of the " all-enfolder " : he is said to " cover the worlds as with a robe, with all the creatures thereof and their dwellings " (VIII., 41), to " enfold the heavens," and to " measure out the earth and mark her uttermost bounds " (the horizon, where sky and earth seem to touch). The same idea- -the keynote to the god's special identity — will THE OLDER GODS. 1 43 be clearly seen to lurk in this bit of grand poetic imagery : " He has encompassed the nights around ; he has, by his wisdom, established the dawns ; he visibly encompasses all things " (VIII. , 41). What particularly strikes in this last passage is the moral quality of wisdom which is added to the god's physi- cal attributions. This is the beginning of the pro- cess of spiritualization which all nature-gods undergo at some stage of their career : from being " the Sky " he becomes the " god^ythe Sky," and as such pre- sides over all the numerous phenomena of which the sky is the seeming scene ; the alternations of light and darkness come under his rule, as well as the heavenly bodies themselves, and as nothing is more obviously and strikingly obedient to a law, so regular in a certain immutable round as these very phenom- ena, Varuna rose to be the supreme embodiment and guardian, then the maker of that law and, by an easy and natural transition, of all law and order, moral and cosmic both — " King of gods and men " in mythic phrase. " King" is the title more especially consecrated to him, though he is also fre- quently given that of Asura. As always happens in such cases, the god's physical and spiritual nature blend, and merge into each other, and separate again, until it is very difficult at times to decide when certain descriptive phrases apply to him as the material sky itself, or as a power outside of it and governing it. The hymns consecrated to him con- tain some very grand poetry and, at all events, it is quite transparent and easy to comprehend after what has just been said. _ Sun and moon are said to be 144 VEDic lyniA. his eyes, but his relation to the former is expressed ill especially varied and fanciful imagery. Some- times the sun is Varuna's golden steed, sometimes the golden-winged bird, his messenger, that dives into a sea of light ; then again it is a golden swing h'lng up on high; on one occasion, in a riddle-style very familiar to the Rishis, Varuna is said to hold up the mighty tree by its top in the groundless space, with its roots up, — the tree-top being again the sun and the roots its beams. lO. Besides " the two worlds " irodasi. Heaven and Earth), which are the first divine couple of all mythologies, there is a third. which, from peculiar local conditions, early assumed a still greater im- portance in the eyes of the Aryas of India and almost monopolized their passionate interest. This is the world " which lies between the two others " — antariksha, the Atmosphere or Air-region, — where the winds do battle, where the clouds gather and disperse, where the waters collect until they form a giant reservoir, a mid-air or celestial sea,' which then is poured down on the earth to feed and refresh her. From its seeming position, this fateful region might well be made a dependence of the sky and given into King Varuna's keeping. This is why he is said to have hollowed out paths for the rivers which flow by his command ; and, on earth, the Seven Rivers are once called " his sisters " ; while in an- other very remarkable passage he is likened unto a sea, into which all the rivers flow yet never fill it— ' Compare the Vouru-Kasha of the Avesta, Story of Media, etc., p. 64. THE OLDER GODS. I45 a striking image for the cloudy, rain-laden sky. Of course he is also the giver of rain which, as so fre- quently throughout the Rig-Veda, is called " the milk of the kine," i. e., the rain-clouds, which hold the waters as the cow the milk in her udder. II. A few coherent passages culled from various hymns to Varuna will now prove intelligible, and merge the fragmentary features of this sublimest of Vedic deities into a more complete and harmonious figure. One Rishi sings: ' ' Sing a hymn, pleasing to Varuna the King — to him who spread out the earth as a butcher lays out a steer's hide in the sun. — He sent cool breezes through the woods, put mettle in the steed [the sun], milk in the kine [clouds], wisdom in the heart, fire in the waters [lightning in the clouds], placed the sun in the heavens, the Soma on the mountains.^ — He upset the cloud-barrel and let its waters flow on Heaven, Air, and Earth, wetting the ground and the crops. — He wets both Earth and Heaven, and soon as he wishes for those kine's milk, the mountains are virrapt in thunder- clouds and the strongest walkers are tired. . .7" (V., 85.) "Varuna laid out the sun's path, and sent the waters coursing to the sea [celestial or atmospheric — samiidra\ ; for the days he appointed their wide tracks and guides them as a racer does his mares. — His breath is the wind that rushes through the air. , . (VII., 87.) He leads forth the great, the holy sun-steed, that brings a thousand gifts. — When I gaze upon his face, I seem to see him as a blazing fire, as the King causes me to behold the splendor of light and darkness in the heavens. . . . (VII., 88.) The stars up there, that are seen at night, where do they hide in the day ? But Varuna's ordinances are immutable and the moon goes shining brightly through the night. . . .(I., 24.) He who knows the path of the birds as they fly through the ample space, * Soma is the plant from which the sacrificial beverage is pre- pared, of which much more later on — the Haoraa of the Eranians. See Story of Media, etc., p. 65. 146 VEDIC INDIA. and on the sea the ships, ... he who knows the track of the wind, . . . he is seated in his mansion protecting the law, Varuna, Almighty King, and looks down attentively from there on all that is hidden, on all that has been and is still to be done. Arrayed in golden mail, he wraps himself in splendor as in a gar- ment^ and around him sit his spies [the stars at night, the sun- beams by day]." — (I., 25.) 12. The "law" of which Varuna is keeper, the " immutable ordinances " which he has established and jealously maintains, are The Rita — origi- nally the Cosmic Order, which regulates the mo- tions of the sun and moon and stars, the alterna- tions of day and night, of the seasons, the gathering of the waters in clouds and their downpour in rain ; in short, the order that evolves harmony out of chaos, and the visible scene of whose working is the sky. That this order is the result of a higher Law is clear — a law which the gods themselves (the Sun, the Moon, the Winds, etc.) can never transgress ; and that it is a beneficent law, is no less evident. Therefore Rita is holy, is true, it is " the right path " — the Right itself, the Absolute Good, which is at once transferred from the tangible and visible into the invisible and abstract world — from the physical into the spiritual. There is a moral Rita as there is a material one, or rather the same Rita rules both worlds. What Law is in the physical, that Truth, Right, is in the spiritual order, and both are Rita. Therefore the god who is the ordainer and keeper of the physical law is also the guardian * Compare the attributions of Ahura-Mazda in the Avesta. See Story 0/ Media, etc., p. 61, THE OLDER GODS. 147 and avenger of the moral law, the punisher of sin. The Arya loved light — the light of day and of the sun — with a passionate adoration and transports of gratitude, equalled only by his loathing and fear of darkness, with its dangers and snares, in any form ; and lying and wrong-doing, — in a word, sin — was to him moral night, with all its horrors. Now Varuna was the dispenser of both light and dark- ness ; when displeased with mortal man, he turned his face from him, and it was night. The accepted poetical expression of this fact was, " Varuna binds the sinner with his fetters," For man felt as help- less in the dark as though bound and given over without defence to the dangers he could not see. Disease was another of Varuna's fetters, and lastly — death. To Vdruna, therefore, man when oppressed with the consciousness of wrong-doing, of sin, cries out for pardon and mercy. And there are in the Rig-Veda a few penitential hymns which, for beauty and depth of feeling, rival the best of the kind in any literature. Vasishtha's (in Book VII.) are the most impressive. 13. The poet thinks back with rapture of a time when he was high in Varuna's favor ; he describes a glorious vision he once had, when it was given him to behold the god face to face ; he was taken on board Varuna's own ship, and together they glided over the celestial waters, with gently rocking mo- tion ; and there in that ship, on that day of blessed- ness, the god gave him the wondrous power of song, to be his Rishi so long as days and dawns follow one another. But there has been a change: in some 148 VEDIC INDIA. way, unknown to himself, Vasishtha has angered his divine friend, who has heaped woes on him, and sent sickness to chastise him, and from the depth of his misery he sends forth his moan : "What has become of our friendship, when we used to commune so harmlessly together ? -when I was allowed access to thy house of the thousand gates ?^— If thy friend, O Varuna, who was dear to thee, if thy companion has offended thee, do not, O holy one, punish us according to our guilt, but be thou the poet's shelter." (VII., 88.) " I speak unto myself : when shall I be once more united with Varuna? Will he again accept my offering without displeasure? When shall I, consoled at heart, behold him reconciled? — I ask, wishing to know my sin ; I go to ask the wise. They all tell me the same in sooth : ' King Varuna it is who is wroth with thee.' — What, O Varuna, was that worst of misdeeds for which thou smitest thy worshipper and friend? . , . Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, and forgive those which we committed ourselves. Release Vasishtha like a calf from the rope. — It was not our own will — it was seduction, an intoxicating drink, passion, dice, thoughtlessness. The stronger perverts the weaker ; even sleep brings on unrighteousness." (VII., 86.) " Let me not yet, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay. Have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! — If I go along, trembling like a cloud driven by the wind, have mercy, almighty, have mercy. — Through want of strength, thou pure one, have I gone astray : have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! — Thirst came upon the worshipper, though he stood in the midst of the waters : have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! — Whenever we, being but men, O Varuna, commit an offence before the heavenly host, whenever we break thy law through thought- lessness, have mercy, almighty, have mercy ! " (VII., 89.) These hymns of Vasishtha's form a cycle, a whole more complete and personal than is usual in the Rig- Veda, yet will bear supplementing with a few more short passages of particular significance, from other, scattered hymns, like the following : THE OLDER GODS. 1 49 " However we may transgress thy law, day by day, after the manner of men, O Varuna, do not deliver us unto death, nor to the blow of the furious, nor to the wrath of the spiteful. My songs flee to thee . . . as birds to their nest . . . as kine to the pastures . . . (I., 25.) Take from me my own misdeeds, nor let me pay, O King, for others' guilt. . , . (II. 28.) That I may live, take from me the upper rope, loose the middle, and remove the lowest.^ (I., 25.) 14. A peculiarity of the worship of Varuna in the Rig-Veda is that he is invoked, more often than alone, jointly with his brother, MiTRA ("the Friend "), who represents sometimes the sun itself, and sometimes Light generally, or again the Power who rules the sun and brings him forth to shine on the world at the proper time. In this mild, wholly beneficent deity we recognize the Mithra of the Eranians, with whom the Avesta makes us so inti- mately acquainted — only he has paled somewhat and become more impersonal, although he has re- tained all the qualities which distinguished him be- fore the separation of the two races, especially that of the all-seeing and truth-loving god.'' But some- how he has lost his individuality (only one single hymn — III., 59 — is addressed to him personally and separately), and has almost merged it with that of Varuna, all of whose attributions, functions, and honors he shares. The sun is said to be " the eye of Mitra and Varuna," as well as Varuna's alone, and Light is the chariot on which both gods, insepa- rably, ride through space on their appointed path, ' We must imagine a man bound to a post — round the shoulders, the middle of the body, and the ankles. ^ See Story of Media, etc., pp. 67-72. 150 VEDIC INDIA. and of which it is once said that it is golden at break of day, while its poles take the color of a gray metal at the setting of the sun. They are joint keepers of the Rita, avengers, but also forgivers, of sin— in short, there is not a thing said of Varuna that is not repeated of both, not a thing asked of Varuna that is not requested of both, only perhaps not quite so emphatically, with not quite the same wealth of striking imagery. Then it is Mitra's own particular business to wake men and call them to the duties of a new day. Hence in time he somehow comes to be associated with the phenomena of Hghtji, and Varuna to be considered as more especially the nocturnal sky, although originally there is no such distinction, and he is proved by a hundred passages to have been the lord of both day and night. But it took root, and the commentators already assert it positively. This was the beginning of a curious transformation which made of the Varuna of the later, Brahmanic, pantheon a being entirely different from the sublime Sky-god of the Rishis, although the change can be traced, step by step, back to the Vedic presentation. Thus, in the later mythology, Vdruna is merely — a Water-god : stripped of all his celestial attributions, nothing is remembered but his association with the waters — the atmospheric sea and rain-rivers, — and this watery realm is transferred to the surface of the earth. Then again, of his moral nature only the sterner, the forbidding, side is re- tained ; he is the punisher only, and the persist- ent use of the conventional expressions : " fetters," " ropes," " nooses," suggests a certain cruelty and THE OLDER GODS. 151 malignancy utterly foreign to the majestic and just, but also merciful, King of Heaven, who is expressly said to " take pity even on the sinner." ' 15. Varuna and Mitra are both Adityas. That means Sons of Aditi. Aditi, in consequence, is habitually entitled " Mother of the Gods," and is, undoubtedly, herself a divine person, or, as we would say, a goddess. But the goddess of what ? Or what does she represent in the order of natural objects or phenomena in which all mythical concep- tions have at some time, originally, had their roots ? To decide this question is the more difificult that aditi originally is merely an adjective, and used as such quite as frequently as in the other way, so that the interpreter is frequently confronted by a doubt as to the proper manner of rendering the word in a ' Although not a sign of anything ignoble can be discovered about the Varuna of the early Rishis, it must be admitted that in their efforts to render the various aspects of the multiform Sky-god, they did not always keep clear of the quaintness, amounting to grotesque- ness, which is such a disturbing feature of classical Indian poetry, such a blemish of Indian art. It is fortunate that the men of the early Vedic ages did not yet attempt to render word-pictures in plas- tic form, for when Varuna is said, on one occasion, to be " four- faced, "^ in right transparent reference to the four cardinal points — — an Indian chisel would not have failed to represent a human figure with four faces, if not four heads on one neck. And from the hosts of nightmare monstrosities which people the later temples, it is easy to imagine what Indian art would have produced in the way of sculp- tural illustration to such passages — rare it is true — as that where Varuna is described as having three shining tongues in his mouth, — sun, moon, and lightning — (Atharva-Veda), or as "pushing onward with his tongue," or lastly as " climbing up the heavens and dispersing the foes' evil spells with his Jla7iiing foot " (the sun again ! Rig- Veda, VIII., 41). 152 VEDIC INDIA. given passage. On the other hand, as is usually the case with such ambiguous expressions, the literal meaning of the common adjective gives us a very- helpful clue towards the solution of the problem pre- sented by the name. " Aditi " means " not bound, not limited," but it is difficult to determine by tvhat the being thus described is " not bound." Some- times it manifestly refers to unboundedness in space, so in this verse, partly quoted already, of a hymn to Mitra-Varuna : " Mitra and Varuna, you mount your chariot, which is golden when the dawn bursts forth, and has iron ' poles at the setting of the sun ; from thence you see what is boundless [adiH, space], and what is limited [difi," the earth], what is yonder and what is here." At other times the boundlessness of time — eternity or immortality — is suggested by the context, and the bonds, freedom from which is expressed, are those of death. This is clearly indicated by the following beautiful passage, supposed to be spoken by a living man musing on his own coming death. " Who will give me back to the great Aditi, that I may see again father and mother? Agni [fire], the first of immortal gods, . . he will give me back to the great Aditi, that I may see again father and mother." (I., 24.) ^ A^/as is translated "iron" for convenience, but, though it is the name of a metal and philologically answers the eisen, " iron " of our modern language, it has been impossible as yet to ascertain what was " the third metal " mentioned in the Rig- Veda, there being no doubt about gold or silver. ^ The particle a is negative, which means that, being prefixed to a word, it annuls the meaning conveyed by that word. So did means "bound, limited" ; therefore adid means " «arjanj/a hither"; then the plural is used : " the parjanyd [clouds] bring joy to the earth." But these are isolated survivals. The Rain-and-Storm god (for India knows little of our quiet rains) is almost always separated from the cloud, which is sometimes his chariot, sometimes the barrel or skin filled with the water which he pours down on the worlds ; then he is the " Son of Heaven," who " speaks a gleam-accompanied, re- sounding word which brings refreshment." i6. Parjanya has one peculiar feature : he pours the seed on the earth ; it enters the plants and there becomes the germ. His name is hardly ever mentioned without some allusion being made to this important duty oi his, and he is in consequence directly invoked as the special guardian of plants : " Parjanya, who brings us food through the plants." Does not this forcibly remind us of that curious Old-Eranian belief that the seeds of all plants were carried down to earth by the rain ? ' 17. From all this it will be seen that Parjanya very possibly goes back to the oldest Aryan period, and might fairly claim a place, in Aryan India, among the " Older gods," the subject-matter of our pre- ceding chapter. But, with every presumption in favor of the suggestion, which great scholars en- dorse,'' the link is broken, direct proof is wanting, no ' See Story of Media, etc., p. 65. ^ See especially the two exhaustive papers by Geo. Biihler, in the Transactions of the London Philological Society, 1859, pp. 154 ff. (English), and in Benfey's Orient and Occident, vol. i., pp. i\i\ff. THE STORM-MYTH. 20/ corresponding name being found in Indo-Eranian antiquity. One thing is sure : that Indra and Par- janya are distinct mythical persons, not convertible quantities. We have a text which says expressly : " Great Indra, who is like to Parjanya in power." It is extremely probable that at one time they were, so to speak, parallel gods, i. e., that two different Aryan tribes worshipped the Storm-and-Rain god under these two different names, with some differ- ences also in their functions; that Indra happened to be the god of the more pushing, warlike tribes, and thus early developed into the champion of Aryan conquest, and by his growing popularity quickly eclipsed his former brother. 1 8. Among the five or six hymns to Parjanya, there is one — V., 83 — which is one of the very few Vedic pieces of complete and faultless poetical beauty, without anticlimaxes or any of the puerilities or vulgarities which so often leave us disappointed with otherwise fine effusions : " I. Sing unto the strong with these songs, laud Parjanya, with praise worship him. Loud bellows the Bull ; he lays down the seed and fruit in the herbs. — 2. He cleaves the trees asunder, he slays the Rakshasas ; all living creatures fear the wearer of the mighty bolt. Even the sinless trembles before him, the giver of rain, for Parjanya, thundering, slays the evil-doers. — 3. As a driver who urges his horses with his whip, he makes the rainy messengers appear. From far arises the roar of the lion when Parjanya makes the cloud full of rain. — 4. The winds rage, the lightnings shoot through the air, the herbs sprout forth from the ground, the (German). One of the greatest contemporary Vedic scholars, Lud- wig, on the other hand, specially identifies Parjanya with the spring monsoon. If so, he might very well be of Indian growth, yet older than Indra. 2o8 VEDIC INDIA. heavens overflow, refreshment is borne to all creatures when Par- janya blesses the earth with rain. — 5. Thou, Parjanya, shield us well, by whose doing the earth is shaken, by whose doing the hoofed herd is supported, by whose doing herbs of all kinds sprout forth. — 6. . . . Oh come to us with the thunder-cloud, pouring down the waters, Asura, our father. — 7. Roar, thunder, give fruit, fly round us with thy chariot that is filled with water. Pull strongly the downward-bent, well-fastened water-skin ; may the heights and the valleys be made even. — 8. Lift up the great barrel, pour down ; loosened may the streams rush forward. Drench heaven and earth, give good drink to the kine. . . . — 10. Well hast thou poured down the rain, now cease ; thou makest that we can pass over the dry plains ; thou hast made the herbs to sprout that we may eat, and hast received praise from the creatures." 19. The Rig- Veda was not generally known, even in name, sixty years ago, except among English and a few German scholars, — certainly not in Russia. Yet we find in the works of the great Russian poet Pushkin a short poem, which might be a free para- phrase on this hymn to Parjanya. We must be per- mitted to translate it for our readers, as it suggests interesting comparisons, and may serve as an addi- tional warning not to be too prompt to suspect connections or imitation wherever there is similarity of thought or imagery. Besides, the poem is both short and beautiful. THE CLOUD. Thou latest straggler of a storm that 's fled ! Alone thou floatest o'er the joyous blue, And easiest, on thy envious course and sad, O'er day reviving an ungenial hue. It was but now thy shade the sky o'erspread. And from thy gloom the threatening lightning broke. THE STORM-MYTH. 209 And from thy womb the mystic thunder spoke, And with thy rain the thirsting earth was fed. Enough then ! hie thee from the peaceful scene ! Refreshed is earth, and long dispersed the storm ; The zephyr courts the trees and sweeps thy form Far from the azure of the sky serene. ' 20. But little need be added specially about Indra's companions in battle, the warlike Maruts — the Storm-Winds. They are the sons of Prishni, the Cloud-cow,* and of RUDRA, rather a subordinate deity in the Veda, though undoubtedly very old, but who, in later Brahmanism and especially Hin- duism, rose to the highest rank. He is thought by the latest scholars to be a personification of the stormy sky, as opposed to the serene sky — ^Varuna^ Ludwig suggests that the oldest conception of Dyaus — the Sky in its entirety, in all its manifestations — split itself into those of Varuna and Rudra, the latter representing the elementary, the former the spiritual and moral side of the original conception ^ — of course a later evolution, yet older than Indra. 'Rudra undoubtedly is a wielder of the thunder- bolt : it is his deadly arrow, with which he is en- \ treated not to strike the worshipper, or his children, or his cattle, but, if need be, to draw his mighty bow against "somebody else." "The Terrible" (rudra) is his name, and terrible he is ; and the ' Prishni, "speckled," from the root PRISH, which, however, also means " sprinkle " (the connection between the two is obvious) — a play on homonyms or ptin quite in the taste of all ancient mythical poetry, and a liberal source of stories, riddles, and puzzles. ^ The Rigveda, vol. iii., p. 320. 14 2IO VEDIC INDIA. flattering things which are said of and to him, about his beauty, his splendor, his healing powers, must be taken as the deprecatory utterances of fear. The best that is expected of him is to spare. It will be seen how widely this deity differs from Indra. 21. The Maruts themselves are frequently called Rudras. They appear always in troops ; sometimes they are twenty-seven, sometimes sixty-six ; then there are said to be thousands of them — ways of saying '' a great many." They are all alike ; no distinctions are made between them, either of age or appearance ; they always act in a body and are " of one mind." Sometimes they drive along " with golden mantles waving, sometimes " cloaked in rain," and once they are shown "clothed in the woolly cloud " as they " split open the rock with might." Their chariots, drawn by self-yoked dappled mares or spotted deer, fleet as birds, now are " laden with lightning," now with buckets and barrels of water which they pour down as they go, singing loudly. Their very sweat is rain, and pleasant to the ear is the crack of their whips (the whistle and whizz of the wind that ushers in a storm). They are boister- ous and noisy. The hymns are simply inexhausti- ble on this theme, and rise on some occasions to naturalistic poetry of great beauty. No enemy is there to face them, not in heaven nor on earth ; they make the mountains to tremble, they rend and shake the trees like wild elephants ; the earth totters and quakes before them with fear " as an aged king." Of course they are entreated for all the usual good things of which Indra is commonly the dispenser, THE STORM-MYTH. 211 and they are not spared rebuke any more than Indra when they do not respond promptly enough to their votaries' instances : ' ' Were ye but mortals, O sons of Prishni, and your worshipper were an immortal — ye should not be neglected as the insect (?) in the grass, nor should ye go the road to Yama [die] ; nor be perpetually subjected to distress and danger." 22. Great and constant as is the friendship between Indra and the Maruts, there are some few traces in the hymns of a dispute between them, with mutual reproaches and self-assertion. Now a dispute be- tween gods always means one between their votaries, and verses like the following may point to some ancient schism between priests of the Maruts and priests of Indra, each party probably contending for their favorites' respective claims to superior prowess and power. In the principal of the pas- sages in question, Indra rebukes the Maruts for having left him to fight the serpent Ahi single- handed, immediately adding that he is strong and powerful enough to overcome his enemies by his own might alone. They reply : " Thou hast indeed done great things, O mighty one, with us for thy helpers, through our equal valor. But we Maruts, O strong Indra, can perform many great deeds by our power when we so desire. " Ind7-a retorts: "By my own inborn might, O Maruts, I slew Vritra. Through my own wrath I grew so strong. It was I who, wielding the lightning, opened the way for the shining waters to run down for men. " The Maruts : " In truth, O hero, there is nought thou canst not conquer. Thou hast no equal among the gods ..." 212 VEDIC INDIA. Indra : " Mine then must be the supreme power. What I have begun, I carry out wisely ; for, O Maruts, I am known as the Strong One. ..." (I., 165.) In conclusion, Indra expresses himself as pleased with their, praise and homage, and the old friendship is renewed — on the distinct understanding that In- dra is the greater. And so he has the best of it here, as he had in his dispute with Varuna. 23. We have now pretty thoroughly studied those gloomy scenes of what we called the Atmospheric Drama which are known in mythological language as the Storm-Myth. But there is another drama, enacted not in the Middle-Region, but on a higher plane — in the highest heaven itself ; nor are the chief actors beings of war and violence, but the most beauteous and gentle of Powers — the light-and-life- giving Sun, and the loveliest of heaven's daughters, the Dawn. Wherefore the scenes in which they take (^part have received the collective name of SUN-AND- JDawn Myth, Their parts — as those of genuine pro- tagonists or " first subjects " should — embrace both love and war : love towards each other (for in some way Sun and Dawn must always be closely con- nected), and war with the beings of opposite nature to theirs: Darkness in all its forms, and consequently some of the foes of Indra and the Maruts — obscuring clouds and blinding mists. 24. The Sun-and-Dawn drama presents more variety of incident than the Storm drama, for the reason that these two mythical persons offer richer poetical material to a lively imagination which, according to the moment's mood or fancy, can THE STORM-MYTH. 21? place them in different relations to each other and to the other and lesser powers which complete the cast. Thus, if the Dawn is the born enemy of Darkness, which to dispel and rout is her only business, she is also the twin sister of Night, as they are manifestly both daughters of Dyaus, the Sky, and both work in harmony in their alternate times, keeping the eternal ordinances of Rita and the Adityas (see pp. 146, 155). Then again she has another sister, even more brilliant, but also older, sadder than herself — the evening Gloaming, doomed to be devoured by the demon Darkness, the shaggy Beast, which the bright young sister vanquished in the morning. Or yet— Dawn and Gloaming are one : the maiden, dazzling in her beauty, arrayed in saf- fron and rosy robes, drives her golden chariot through the portals of the East, closely followed by her lover the young Sun, whose advances she re- ceives, coy, but not unwilling, until her delicate, ethereal being shrinks from his more and more fiery touch and she flees to the ends of the heavens, van- ishes, and is lost to her gay lover ; he, meantime, not being free to tarry (for the path laid out by Rita must be run), pursues his way, meets foes — the cloud- demons of many shapes, the crawling mist-serpents, whom he transfixes and dispels with his golden spear — meets other loves too, especially the dangerously fascinating Apsaras, the water-maidens that sail the sky on light shifting cloudlets — until, weary, shorn of his power, yet glorious still, he sinks low and lower, sometimes serenely victorious, sometimes still fight- ing his darkling, crowding foes, whom he disperses 214 VEDIC INDIA. by a last mighty effort, like a dying hero ; and here at last he, the old Sun, beholds again his love of the morning — no longer the radiant, hopeful Dawn, but the subdued, the saddened Gloaming. For one brief while the lovers are united at their career's end ; for one brief moment the joy of their meeting irradiates the West, then, in each other's embrace, they sink to their rest — to their doom, and Darkness, their arch-foe, engulphs them. To-morrow's young rising Sun is their child — if the popular fancy cares to look for a sequel to the day's drama, which is not usual in early Indian poetry. It prefers the fiction of the old Sun being somehow rejuvenated, cured, liberated, and reappearing youthful and vigorous in the morning. 25. It is very evident that these are only one or two of a great many possible poetical interpretations of the same natural phenomena, and that each such interpretation must shape itself into an image, an incident, a story. What endless material for love stories, love tragedies ! Each such utterance, sepa- rately, is only a more or less apt and beautiful poetical figure, simile, metaphor. But if collected and fitted and pieced into a system, then consistently carried through, some very queer and even distressing feat- ures will appear — distressing, i.e., so long as we have not the key to mythical language and take its say- ings as we would so many bald statements on human affairs. So, while the Sun is the eternal foe of Dark- ness, still, as he is seen to emerge out of darkness, he may, in a sense, be said to be the " Child of Dark- ness," and it follows that he of necessity must kill THE STORM-MYTH. 21$ his father, just as Agni must needs devour his parents as soon as born (see p. i6o). Again, it is no faulty poetical figure to call the Sun the child, or the brother, of the Dawn — and then it may very well happen that he loves, or weds, his mother or his sis- ter, or kills her ! Bad enough to place gods in such awkward positions ; at least the devout votary has the resource, like Agni's worshipper, to abstain from judging the acts of great deities (see p. i6o). But bring down all this to earth — as all nature-myth has invariably been brought down, to become Heroic Epos — and see in what a fine tangle the later poets will find themselves, what horrible deeds they will calmly relate of their most cherished ancient heroes and founders of royal houses, without the least consciousness or recollection of the original real meaning of what they tell ! Fortunately there is lit- tle system or consistency in the Rig-Veda — at least, so far as combining and connecting the different myths with which it teems. So we can take each one on its own merits, untroubled by moral qualms or logical misgivings. S(JRYA — THE SUN. 26. To begin with plain fact, SURYA is the Sanskrit common noun designating the Sun ; the root contained in it gives it the meaning of " bril- liant, shining." And Surya is, in the Rig-Veda, the material, visible luminary, " created " by the gods (or even some particular god), and obedient to their bidding. But Surya is not only the sun, he is also the Sun-god, powerful, independent, subject only to 2l6 VEDIC INDIA. the ordinances of the great Adityas, themselves governed by Rita, the supreme Cosmic and Moral Law. This distinction — surely unconscious, and which we find in the presentment of all the Nature- gods — between their physical and moral essence, accounts for the difference in the tone of the several hymns, and even different parts of the same hymns, addressed to this deity. These invocations are mostly fine poetry, and the figures used explain themselves. 27. One quality has been universally ascribed to the divinized Sun in every age, by every ancient race : that of being " all-seeing." The association of this quality with the giver of light and the disperser of darkness is too natural to suggest mutual borrow- ing, and we need not wonder if we find a striking resemblance between the Old Chaldean and the Old Aryan hymns to the Sun, not only in this particular, but in several other poetical conceptions." Surya, , a Son of the Sky (Dyaus), we have already learned to know as the Eye of Mitra and Varuna.^ Now, , in Oriental phraseology, the Eyes of the King are ;i his spies, so it is but natural that he should observe | all the deeds of men, and report them to the great Adityas, the guardians and avengers of Law and Right. That the expression was really undei;stood in this manner is proved by the frequent prayer to Surya to " report men sinless before the Adityas," — which looks singularly like a request, in child-slang, " not to tell on them," and so not bring them into 'See Story of Chaldea, pp. 171, 172. 2 Once Surya is called the Eye of Agni also (I., 115). THE STORM-MYTH. 21} disgrace and punishment. Thus one of the Vasish- thas sings : "If thou, O Surya, at thy rising wilt report us truly sinless to Varuna and Mitra, we will sing to please the gods. . . , Surya is rising, O Varuna-Mitra, to pace both worlds, looking down on men, protector of all that travel or stay, beholding right and wrong among men. He unharnesses his seven Harits * . . . and hastens dutifully to your throne, ye twain, surveying all beings, as a shepherd his flock. . . , Surya emerges from the sea of light, he whose path the Adityas laid out. . . ." (VII., 60.) ". . . He unweaves [ravels up] the black mantle, his rays cast off the darkness, rolling it up as a hide and dropping it into the waters. " Not hanging on to anything, not made fast, how comes it that he falls not from such height ? By whose guidance does he travel ? Who has seen it ? " (IV., 13.) Even more rapturous is the following greeting : " The gods' bright face has now arisen, the Eye of Mitra, Varuna, and Agni ; Siirya fills heaven, earth, and atmosphere, the breath of life of all that stands and moves. . . . The beautiful golden Harits, the bright ones, hailed by songs of joy, they mount to the highest heaven, and in one day their course encircles heaven and earth. And when he unharnesses the mares, the veil of darkness spreads over all things." (I., 115.) We have learned to know the Sun as a horse, and as a bird. These images both remain standing symbols of the god, and there even are two hymns (I., 163 and X., 177), rather obscurely and mystically worded, celebrating him as " the Bird adorned by ^ Surya's seven steeds or mares — as also the Dawn's — are generally called Harits ("brilliant, ruddy") ; they are of course his rays, as the first verse of I., 50, expressly shows (see farther on). It should be noted, however, that the steeds of other gods — Indra's and Agni's, for instance — are also sometimes called so. 2l8 VEDIC INDIA. the Asura " (Varuna), and as " the Horse who neighed as soon as he was born, emerging out of the waters [or mist]," the Steed with the "falcon's wings and the gazelle's feet." So the Dawn is said to bring "the Eye of the gods" to "lead forth the white and lovely horse." There are few entire hymns addressed to Surya, but of these the fol- lowing (!.,' 50), has become famous for its rich imagery and its unusually finished literary form : " I. The god who knows all beings rises aloft, drawn by his rays, that he, Siirya, may behold all things.' — 2. Straightway, like thieves, the stars with their brightness slink away before the all-seeing god. — 3. His rays are visible to all mankind, blazing like flames. — 4. All- conspicuous on thy rapid course thou Greatest light,, illumining the whole firmament. — 5. Thou risest for the race of gods and for that of men, that all may behold thy light. — 6. With that same glance where- with Varuna, the illuminator, surveys the busy race of men, — 7. Thou, O Siirya, searchest the sky and the wide space, making the days, spying out all creatures. — 8. Seven mares bear thee on, O far- seeing Surya, in thy chariot, god of the flaming locks. — 9, Siirya has harnessed the seven Harits, daughters of the car, self-yoked. — 10. Gazing out of the darkness up at the highest light, we have reached Surya, a god among the gods. " INDRA AND SURYA. Surya's relations to Indra are rather peculiar. The grim warrior god appears to treat him sometimes in a friendly and sometimes in a hostile way. True, there are many passages — in hymns to Indra, be it noted — which would place the sun-god in his direct dependence, by actually saying that he was created * This is the rendering of the French scholar A. Bergaigne ; others translate, "that all may behold Surya." Either meaning would be appropriate and satisfactory. THE STORM-MYTH. 219 by Indra ; but this must be taken only as a piece of exaggeration from excessive zeal on the part of the worshipper to ingratiate himself with the deity he is invoking — a trick of Vedic priestly poetry which has long been noticed as one of its most peculiar and characteristic features. When, however, Indra is said to have prepared the way for Surya, or " caused him to shine," it is no more than good myth-rhetoric. For we can well imagine — from personal observation — the sun-god so overwhelmed in battle with Ahi, Vritra, and other cloud-demons as to be unable to extricate himself and overcome his foes without the help of the Thunderer's weighty arm ; in plain prose — a thunderstorm clears the sky and allows the sun to shine. It is, in substance, the same myth as that contained in a passage which tells how " the gods lifted Surya out of the sea \saimidrd\ wherein he lay hidden " (X., 72). Not less transparent is the re- quest to Indra that he should "hide the sun," here likened to a wheel, and direct his bolts against Shushna, the Demon of Drought. But this short verse also very clearly shows how Surya, on cer- tain occasions, could be regarded by Indra, on be- half of men and nature generally, as an enemy and a nuisance,to be suppressed, at least temporarily, at all cost. For when battle is to be waged in earnest against the wickedest of all fiends, the blazing disc, or wheel, of the sun is hardly a desirable auxiliary. So that we do not wonder at the climax when Indra is praised for having, with the help of Soma, broken a wheel from Surya's chariot and sent it spinning downhill, thereby laming " the great wizard." 220 VEDIC INDIA. INDRA AND USHAS. 27. On the same principle we can understand how the Dawn herself — USHAS, the beautiful, the auspicious ' — could be treated by Indra at times with the utmost severity ; in seasons of drought, is not the herald of another cloudless day, the bringer of the blazing sun, a wicked sorceress, a foe to gods and men, to be dealt with as such by the Thunderer when, soma-drunk, he strives with his friends the Maruts to storm the brazen stables of the sky, and bring out the blessed milch-kine which are therein imprisoned ? Indra's treatment of the hostile Dawn is as summary as his treatment of Surya, though at other times he is as ready to help her, and " lay out a path " for her, and " cause her to shine " or '* light her up." It is the same myth ; and fortunately we have it in a far clearer and completer form. Smash- ing the obnoxious one's car seems to be the one method which occurs to the great foe-smiter, who is more earnest than inventive. "This heroic task also, this manly deed, O Indra, thou didst perform, that thou didst smite the woman who planned mischief, the Daughter of the Sky [Dyaus] ; this Ushas, who was exalting herself, thou didst strike her down. Ushas fell in terror from her shattered car when the mighty one had felled it to the ground. There it lay, broken utterly, while she herself fled far away." (IV., 30.) This feat of Indra's is recounted in a hymn which rehearses a list of his finest exploits. It is evidentl)' looked on as one of his highest claims to glory and ' Ushas — from a root meaning "to bum," " to glow." THE STORM-MYTH. 221 gratitude, for it is repeatedly alluded to iii different books. In one passage, the fair Ushas is represented as having taken the lesson to heart and flying of her own accord, leaving her chariot standing, from fear of Indra's bolt, while in another the latter is said to have smitten certain enemies as he had broken Ushas' car. USHAS, THE DAWN. 28. What strikes us most in all this is the exulting and insulting tone in which the poets celebrate the defeat of the goddess who is, except on this one oc- casion, their greatest favourite, their heart's desire, — one might almost say their pet. Some twenty hymns are addressed wholly to her, and she has a place in numerous others ; and everywhere the poets' fancy exhausts itself in brilliant and dainty imagery, in a variety of loving and admiring epithets. Again and again she is likened to a beautiful woman or maiden, who reveals herself in all her loveliness ; and it must be confessed that these descriptions, as a rule, recall Oriental harem life (or the Zenana of In- dian princes), too realistically to be relished by the general reader in their original crudity. So that such passages, scattered through most of the Rig books, may best Tae summed up in the very compre- hensive lines of Mr. J. Muir.' " Like a beautiful young woman dressed by her mother, a richly decked dancing girl, a gaily attired wife appearing before her hus- band, or a female rising resplendent out of the bath, — smiling and * Sanskrit Texts, vol. v., p. 194. 222 VEDIC INDIA. confiding in the irresistible power of her attractions, she unveils her bosom to the gaze of the beholder." A few characteristic verses culled from various hymns will be more interesting and instructive than descriptions detached from the texts : " The shining Ushas has been perceived ; she has opened the doors [of the sky] ; setting in motion all living things, she has revealed to us treasures — [the golden treasures of light that were hidden by darkness] — Ushas has awakened all creatures (I., 113, 4). — . . . She hastens on, arousing footed creatures, and makes the birds fly aloft (I., 48, 5). — The birds fly up from their nests and men seeking food leave their homes (I., 124, 12). — [Arousing] the pros- trate sleeper to move, [impelling] one to enjoyment, another to the pursuit of wealth, [enabling] those who see but a little way to see far ; . . . [arousing] one to wield the royal power, another to follow after fame, another to the pursuit of wealth, another to perform ser- vices, Ushas awakes all creatures to go their different paths in life (I., 113, 5, 6). — Inasmuch as thou hast made Agni to be kindled — [for morning worship] — . . . and hast awakened the men who are to sacrifice, thou hast done good service to the gods (I., 113, g). — She has yoked [her horses] from the remote rising place of Surya ; . . . Everything that moves bows down before her glance ; the active goddess creates light ; by her appearance the magnificent Daughter of the Sky drives away our haters. Ushas has repelled our enemies. ... In thee when thou dawnest is the life and breath of all creatures. . . . " (I-, 48, 7-iO-) The dispeller of enemies — not only of the powers of darkness, but also of thieves and other malefactors who are sheltered by darkness, of bad dreams, phan- toms, spells, and all the evil brood of darkness — is quite naturally likened to a warrior brandishing weapons. But rarely. The poets dwell almost en- tirely on the lovely and even the pathetic aspects of their favorite. And indeed there is no lack of THE STORM-MYTH. 223 pathos and sadness in the conception of a beauteous and gracious being who, herself immortal and ever youthful, though old as Time, serenely and inevi- tably, in obedience to the highest Law, (she is "the preserver of Rita," "born in Rita,") both prolongs and shortens life, each new day being both her gift to men and the tribute she levies on their sum of days. The pathos is deepened if the bringer of food and joy, the dispenser of life and death, is herself a mortal, a creature of a day — nay, of an hour, — one of many as brilliant and as ephemeral as herself, as she needs must be if each day is thought as having a dawn to itself. In the hymns to Ushas we find her addressed and referred to almost in one breath both as the one ever- returning or born again, and as the fleeting unit of an endless series : "... As thou wast invoked by the poets of old, . . . reward our praise also, O Ushas, with gifts and with brilliant light ! (I., 48, 14). " Maintaining the ordinances of the gods, but wasting away the lives of men, Ushas has shone forth, the last of the numerous Dawns that are past, and the first of those that are coming (I., 124, 2). " Shine on us with thy best rays, O divine Ushas ; give us a long life ! (VIL, 77, 5). " Ushas has dawned before ; let her now dawn again. . . . (I., 48, 3). " Born again and again, though ancient, shining with an ever uniform hue, she wastes away the life of mortals as a clever gambler the stakes — (I., 92, 10). " Ushas follows the track of the Dawns that are past and is the first of the unnumbered Dawns that are to come. — • . . . How great is the interval that lies between the Dawns that have arisen and those which are yet to arise ? Ushas yearns longingly after the for- 224 VEDIC INDIA. mer Dawns and gladly goes on shining with the others [that are to come]. Those mortals are gone who saw the earliest Ushas dawn ; we shall gaze upon her now ; and the men are coming who are to be- hold her on future morns. — . . . Perpetually in former days did the divine Ushas dawn ; and now to-day the radiant goddess beams upon this world : undecaying, immortal. . . . " (I., 113, 8-13.) The hymn from which the last extract is taken (L, 113) is the longest and most sustainedly beauti- ful of those addressed to the " desire of all men," — that which closes with the magnificent finale, the grandest lyrical effusion in the whole Rig- Veda : " Rise ! Our life, our breath has come back ! The darkness is gone, the light approaches ! Ushas has opened a path for Surya to travel ; we have reached the point where our days are lengthened. The priest, the poet, celebrating the brightening Ushas, arises with the web of his hymn ; shine, therefore, magnificent Ushas, on him who praises thee. . . . Mother of the gods ! manifestation of Aditi ! * banner of the sacrifice, mighty Ushas, shine forth ! Arise ! lend a gracious ear to our prayer, giver of all boons !" (I., 113, 16-20.) We seem to see the uplifted hands, the worship- ping upturned eyes, amid the glories of the awaken- ing Eden-like nature — and we long for a burst of Wagner's song and harmony. It seems as though nothing short of Brynhild's waking invocation, " Hail, O Sun," could worthily render the grandeur, sim- plicity and whole-hearted adoration in this archaic ode.^' * See p. 154. ** Nor is the association far-fetched. For Brynhild and Sigfrid are originally the Sun-and-Dawn lovers of Teutonic mythology, as is now fully understood by the veriest dabbler in music and folk-lore. THE STORM-MYTH. 22 5 THE TWO SISTERS. 29. There are some verses in this same hymn which very beautifully and completely describe the Dawn's relations to her sister, who of course is no other than Night. ' ' The ruddy Bright-one with her bright Calf [the Sun] * has arrived ; to her the Dark-one has relinquished her abodes ; kindred to one another, immortal, alternating Night and Morning go on changing color. — The same is the never-ending path of the tvi^o sisters, which they travel by the gods' command. They strive not, they rest not, the majestic Night and Dawn, of one mind, though unlike." — (I,, 113, 2-3.) Once or twice the Bright-one is said to be born of the Dark-one (the Dawn to be daughter of Night), but in the great majority of texts they are sisters — the two beauteous Daughters of the Sky, equally bene- ficent, equally welcome, and equally — but alternately — bringing refreshment and vigor to all that lives ; " alike to-day, alike to-morrow, fulfilling the fixed ordinance of Varuna," never transgressing it, never omitting to be at the proper time at the appointed place. Evidently Night is not here conceived as the wicked foe of men, the devouring Beast, the river or sea of darkness, but as the kind friend, the bringer of rest and coolness, the gentle fosterer and restorer. Both sisters are great weavers. They are perpetually weaving mantles and veils — golden, shining, or black, each after her manner ; and one undoes the weav- ing of the other. Ushas shows herself beaming at the borders of the sky, having thrown off the dark ' This peculiar surname will be explained farther on. IS 226 VEDIC INDIA. covering, as she drives on her beautiful chariot drawn by the self-yoked ruddy steeds (I., 113, 14); Surya rolls it up like a hide (VII., 63, i,) unweaves, ravels it up, and hides it away (IV., 13, 4). Yet even this work the sisters perform amicably: "Jointly they weave the out-spread curtain " (II., 4, 6). So close indeed is their relationship, though each goes when the other comes — Ushas " chases far away her sister " — and so harmoniously do they work together, that the poet at last wonderingly asks : " Which of them is the older and which the younger? Who knows, O ye sages ? They carry (between them) all that exists, revolving as on one wheel " (I., 185, l). 30. Ushas' relations to the Sun are as natural, but more varied. She " shines with the light of her lover," Surya, who "follows her as a lover follows a maiden." But she flies before him and he never can join her; it were disastrous for her if he did, for the delicate Dawn never could stand the full blaze of her lover's splendor ; indeed one poet urges her — not very politely — to hasten and make no delay, that Surya may not scorch her like a thief or an enemy (v., 79, 9). But sometimes she is Surya's wife — though he is her brother too, both being children of Dyaus — and sometimes his mother. As such she appears in that peculiar passage where she arrives with her " bright Calf." For there Ushas, the fair, the resplendent, appears in the form of a Cow ! 31. Vedic heavenly zoology is a curious thing; and confusing, unless one has the patience to study out its main features and underlying principle, after which it becomes, on the whole, tolerably intelligi- THE STORM-MYTH. 22/ ble. The phenomena are many ; the animals are few ; so they have to do duty for different things. They are, if we may so word it, homonyms in their way. Thus the Horse, the well-attested emblem of the Sun, once in a while stands for the Sky — as when the Pitris are said to have adorned the black horse with pearls (the moonless starry sky). Serpents are not always drought-clouds ; there are the serpents of darkness. Nor are cows always rain-clouds ; there are also the ruddy, bright cows — the Kine of Light, and the black cows — the Kine of Darkness. Looked at in one way. Night is the dark stable in which the bright cows are shut up ; Ushas opens the stable and they bound forth joyously and " scatter around her like a herd." These are of course the rays of the dawn which shoot forth in all directions — and lo! Ushas appears in the role of shepherdess. Vedic imagery could not stop there. From a " leader of cows," she became " the mother of cows," and con- sequently a cow herself ; a lovely bright one of course ; hence her child, the Sun — as calf ! But even so her bond with her sister Night is not severed, and both are invoked together as " the two cows which give milk of different colors from similar udders." This fully explains the otherwise obscure passage where Indra is said to have put dark milk in the black cows and light milk in the ruddy ones. 32. We must not forget one last attribute of Ushas, not the least of her charms in the eyes of her by no means disinterested votaries — her great wealth. It is not only that, at her coming, she re- veals the treasures of golden light, — the herds of 228 VEDIC INDIA. ruddy cows, — which had been hidden by her sister Night. She is the dispenser, in an indirect way, of far more substantial treasures. By going from house to house, arousing all sleepers, whether poor or rich, ko their day's work, she fosters honest endeavor and ■lelps it to its earnings.' But even this is too slow md commonplace a way to wealth to content those priests who are forever crying out to the gods, in the name of the worshippers, for riches on a large scale — herds of cattle, horses, booty from enemies, wives (really female slaves), and sons, strong, stalwart, and numerous, — and, in their own, for "great gifts " and " liberality," i. e., the highest possible pay for their priestly services from kings and wealthy patrons generally. These great boons, these windfalls, the gods reserve for the pious sacrificer and " soma- presser," the zealous performer of appointed rites and singer of hymns. But, to be efificacious, the singing, the rites, the sacrifice, must take place at the appointed times, of which the most sacred and im- portant is the hour of sunrise. Ushas, therefore, who " causes Agni to be kindled " on the morning altar, who gives the signal for the "joyful voices " to be raised, and " brings the gods to the sacrifice " jointly with their messenger Agni, puts men in the way of obtaining all they so much covet, and thus becomes a dispenser of wealth. Not improperly, therefore, is she addressed in such strains as this. ' Morgenstund^ hat gold im Mund (" Early morn has its mouth full of gold"), the homely old German saw instructs us, while " Early to rise," and " The early bird," are the despair of every nursery. THE STORM-MYTH, 229 which may stand here for numberless similar pas- sages : "Dawn on us with prosperity, O Ushas, Daughter of the Sky, with great glory, O luminous and bountiful goddess, with riches ! — Bringing horses and cattle, all-bestowing, they [the Dawns] have often come to shine. Send riches then to me also, O Ushas, incline the Kings to dispense gifts. . . . Those princes, O Ushas, who at thy approach incline their thoughts to liberality, Kanva, the chief of his race,' here celebrates. — (I., 48, 1-4.) " May the soma-presser obtain such Dawns as rise upon the liberal mortal (Dawns), rich in kine, in sons all stalwart, and in horses. . . ."-(I-. "3, 18.) Always the same thing : the bargain between the worshipper and the deity he invokes. To the " lib- eral mortal," who grudges neither soma, nor fire, nor cakes and hymns, nor fees to the priests, a liberal re- turn is due from the gods. It is to be noticed that, however varied the Vedic Aryas' mythical {i. e., poetical) vocabulary may be, their begging is re- markably monotonous. They ask precisely the same things of every deity — quantities of them — and in almost precisely the same words. THE ASHVINS. 33. Numerous are the Children of the Sky. We will close the brilliant galaxy with the renowned couple of twins, the ASHVINS, or Horsemen, the brothers of the Sun and the Dawn. They are almost as great favorites as the latter. Many hymns are addressed to them, and they are incidentally men- ' This hymn is one of a collection attributed to the priestly family of the Kanvas. 230 VEDIC INDIA. tioned or invoked in a great many more. No other deities, scarcely Indra himself, have become the heroes of such a number of what we may call " story- myths." Indeed, so many and different things are told, a,sked, and expected of them, that when the Rig- Veda had lost its living actuality, and commen- tators went to work on it, they were fairly puzzled to determine their original nature, /. e., the natural powers or phenomena which they represent. For they are not only horsemen (or more probably " descendants of the horse," since they themselves never ride, but drive their own chariots like the other gods) — they are also the physicians of gods and men, workers of miracles, rescuers from storms, best men at weddings, protectors of love and conju- gal life. This is certainly confusing ; and no less so are the answers given by different commentators to the query : " Who — or rather what — are the Ash- vins ? " Yet some indications we owe them which helped our scholars in their researches ; but a care- ful and minute study of the Rig texts has, as usual, proved the surest guide, and the question may now be considered as settled. 34. The Ashvins' connection with the Horse (ashva) gives assurance of their heavenly luminous nature, and this is confirmed by the many epithets conferred on them. Like their sister Ushas, they are beautiful, gracious, bright, swift, immortal, young, though ancient. This latter feature alone would point to a regularly recurring phenomenon of the morning. Then, they are the earliest risers and arrive the first at the morning sacrifice, ahead oi the THE STORM-MYTH. 23 I Dawn, who is said to come immediately after them ; the worshipper, to greet them with his song has to get up before the dawn ; and they are asked to come to the house on their chariot " to which the twilight is yoked," for the sacrifice held " at the first lighting up of the dawn." Indeed they come earlier still ; their chariot appears** at the end of the night," and they are invoked also " in the last watch of night," as well as ** at break of day " — two moments, to be sure, which come very close together ; with the difference, however, that at the former it is still dark and at the latter it is not quite light. They are " dispellers of darkness " and " killers of Raksha- sas " like all luminous beings ; they " open the doors of the fast-closed stable rich in cows " (the Dawns, or the rays of the Dawn). These things are explicitly said and repeated in numbers of texts,' and leave no doubt as to the original place of the Ashvins in the order of natural phenomena : they represent the twi- light hour which precedes the dawn, luminous, but not yet brilliant — a delicate touch quaintly expressed by giving them a team of gray asses — animals that are not quite horses and subdued in color. Not always though. Nothing is immutable in the Rig- Veda. So the chariot of the Ashvins is quite as often drawn by horses. One poet is struck by some fancy, some nice characteristic detail, and gives it. Another takes it up, or sets it aside, at his pleasure — or, for that matter, he does so himself. It is all a question of moods, not deliberate invention. ' See for a large and convincing collection of them in Myriantheus' valuable monograph Die Afvins. 232 VEDIC INDIA. 35. The most decisive witness in favor of this identification of the Ashvins with the morning twi- light, we find in this thoroughly Vedic riddle : " When the dark cow [Night] sits among the ruddy cows [the rays of the Dawn], I invoke you, Ashvins, Sons of the Sky," /. e., " when night has not quite gone and morning is just coming." Possibly it was this text which clinched the question for Yaska, one of the great native commentators, who in his catalogiie raisonnd of Vedic deities (the Niriiktd), after men- tioning the opinions of other students, gives as his own that " Their time is after the (latter) half of the night when the (space's) becoming light is resisted (by darkness) ; for the middlemost Ashvin, (the one between darkness and light) shares in darkness, whilst (the other) who is of a solar nature — ddiiya — shares in light." ' This also explains why there should be two Ashvins, twins. For twilight, the well-named, is of a complicated and essentially dual nature : be- ginning in darkness, ending in light. Hence, too, there is a difference between the brothers. Yaska, in the passage partly quoted above, says that " one [of course the elder] pervades everything with moist- ure, the other with light," Again, one is a hero and conqueror (he who stands the brunt of the first fight with darkness), and the other is the wealthy, fortunate Son of the Sky (whose time is when the fight is won, of which good news he is the bearer, ' Translation of Professor Goldstiicker. The words in parentheses are put in by the translator to relieve the, to us, obscure conciseness of the Sanskrit original. THE STORM-MYTH. 233 while the treasures of returning Hght begin to be revealed). Still the two moments are so close to- gether that the twins are regarded as inseparable, and compared to all sorts of things which go in pairs — the two eyes, the two ears, the two breasts, a bird and his mate, two wheels, etc., etc. In the course of time, a certain spirit of symmetry asserts itself, and the ritual decrees that the Ashvins shall be invoked twice, morning and evening, making them to personate both the twilight before sunrise and that after sunset — though in express contradic- tion to the following text (V., 77, 2) : '* Invoke the Ashvins in the morning; the evening is not the time for gods — it is displeasing to them " (naturally, since the gods are devas, " bright "). It will be seen how easily this could lead to identify the Twins, one with the morning twilight, the other with the evening twilight, — and even with Day and Night, — which has been done repeatedly, contrary to the very essence of the myth, which makes them inseparable, not alternate. Ritualism at last prevails entirely, and we find — still in the Rig-Veda — a third invoca- tion of the Ashvins at noon, evidently in accord with the three daily offerings. This is the beginning of confusion, and affords us at the same time a glimpse of the stratification of periods in the Rig- Veda — like that in the Avesta — resulting in the obliteration, or at least blurring, of the original con- ceptions. 36. Once we have succeeded in determining the elementary nature of the joy-bringing Twins, we also have the key to their various acts and deeds, which 234 VEDIC INDIA. are always gracious and beneficent, wherein they differ widely from most other gods. They are invariably mild, helpful, merciful. They are the great Physicians, who heal the sick, make the lame to walk, the blind to see. But their patients are always the same : the Old Sun, who reaches the goal of his long day's journey weary and sick unto death — when the foe he has fought and vanquished, grim Darkness, at last overcomes and blinds him — and who is made young again and vigorous, and seeing, by the returning light which the Ashvins — the morn- ing twilight — conquer and bring ; or else it is the Old Dawn — the evening gloaming — who runs the same dangers, undergoes the same infirmities and de- cay, and is led forth, rejuvenated and radiant, by her ever youthful brothers. They are best men at wed- dings, protectors of love and marriage, because they bring the Dawn-bride before the face of her Sun- lover, or reunite the separated lovers. On one occasion, indeed, Ushas is said to have mounted on the Ashvins' car — (was it not on the memorable occasion when her own was shattered by the un- gallant Indra?) — and to have chosen them for her husbands. — They are rescuers from stormy waters, because night is a dark and stormy waste of waters, full of dangers and monsters, into which the worn- out Sun fatally sinks, and in which he might perish, did not the ever helpful heralds of Light take him into their swiftly flying ship and carry him safely across to the other — the bright — shore, from which he rises aloft, in fully restored vigor and splendor. — And will not those who do all these kindly ofifices, THE STORM-MYTH, 235 who work these miracles for gods, do the same for suppliant men ? We know that every myth ends by coming down to earth and being humanized. It will strike every one how many and varied stories could and must have been spun out of this pecu- liarly attractive and prolific myth of the Ashvins. 37. We cannot close the gallery of the Vedic Beings of Light without devoting a few lines to one who, though holding a rather modest rank, shares in their honors, and is always affectionately and rever- ently remembered. We mean PUSHAN, pre-emi- nently a friend of men, and whose career is one of almost homely usefulness. The great French Vedic scholar, A. Bergaigne, sums it up in one brief page, so lucid and comprehensive, that we cannot do better than reproduce it : " Pushan is, first of all, a pastoral and agricultural deity. He is requested to direct the furrow ; his hand is armed with the ox-goad ; he is principally the guardian of cattle, who prevents them from straying, and finds them again when they get lost. He is, therefore, prayed to follow the cows, to look after them, to keep them from harm, to bring them home safe and sound. His care extends to all sorts of property, which he guards or finds again when lost. He is also the finder of hidden treasure, — cows first on the list, always. Lastly, Pushan guides men, not only in their search for lost or hidden things, but on all their ways generally. In a word, he is the god of wayfarers as well as of husbandmen and herdsmen. He is called ' Lord of the Path,' he is prayed to ' lay out the roads,' to remove from them foes and hindrances, to guide his worshippers by the safest roads, as 'knowing all the abodes.' ..." A very human field of action — almost a picture of rural life. But all the foregoing pages have been written to little purpose, if it does not strike the 236 VEDIC INDIA. reader at once that it is a reflection of the usual heavenly pastoral, — itself, of course, originally copied from the earthly model. We are, by this time, suf- ficiently familiar with the aerial pastures and roads, along which the heavenly cattle — whether Cloud- Kine or Kine of Light — roam and stray, get stolen or lost, and are found again. So do we know who they are that guard, and follow, and find them, and bring them back. But not these alone are heaven's "hidden treasure." Agni lies hidden and is found, and so is Soma, whom Pushan is expressly said to have brought back " like a strayed ox " ; and imme- diately : " Pushan, abounding in rays, found the king, who lay hidden, and who now shines forth on the sacrificial grass." This at once establishes Pushan's claim to a place in the highest heavens, at the very source of light itself. It is there that he is the lover of his sister Surya, the Sun-maiden, and sails his golden ships across the aerial ocean. So much for this gentle deity's naturalistic aspects. His loftier symbolical character will become appar- ent in connection with a different — and later devel- oped — order of ideas.' * See A. Bergaigne, La Religion Vifdique, vol. ii., pp. 420-430. CHAPTER VII. THE RIG-VEDA: LESSER AND LATER GODS. — STORY MYTHS. I. Classification, on the whole, is unsatisfactory. The worst of it is, the things classified won't dove- tail nicely, but are sure to overlap both ways or to fall short. Yet, when one has on hand an over- whelming mass of material, and is, moreover, limited to a scant selection from it, one would flounder helplessly without the assistance of such a guide, even though it be lame and to some extent mis- leading. This is a disadvantage under which all great subjects labor. And of all great subjects there is none both vaster and more complex than the Rig-Veda ; none that grows and expands more bewilderingly under handling ; none that more elusively resists classification and — to use a very modern yet already somewhat trite expression — popularization. For popularization means : present- ing the results of the work of specialists in an un- technical form, intelligible and attractive to the large mass of average, general readers. And how are "results" to be presented where so very few have been finally established ? in a branch of learn- 237 238 VEDIC INDIA. ing which is in the very fervor of research, discovery, comparing theories, correcting errors or hasty con- clusions, — so that it is a current saying among brethren of the craft that no book on Ancient India can reach its last chapter without the first ones being rewritten.' Method, therefore, is, after all, the best safeguard, and careful sorting and sifting — classify- ing in short ; under reservation and with frequent qualifying of one's own definitions. 2. To begin with the title of this chapter. It should be well understood that the adjectives " lesser and later " are not meant to apply to one and the same deities, or at least not always. The more a divine person goes into abstraction, and the farther it becomes removed from the natural phenomenon which it originally represented, or the more it accen- tuates certain details of that phenomenon, the later, as a rule, we can place it. Thus the high moral con- ception of the Sky-god Varuna cannot but have been evolved out of that of the primeval Dyaus, the material visible sky. Again, when we meet three goddesses (very subordinate and rarely mentioned in the hymns), representing the three phases of the moon — the growing, the full, and the waning, — we may be very sure that the worship of the moon itself preceded them. Though of course it is never pos- sible even to suggest a particular time for such ' The truth of this saying the author can vouch for from experi- ence. Such scholars as may glance at the present volume and be inclined to fault-finding, will therefore please consider that, with the best-meant efforts to " keep up to date," a book, to be a book, must be printed some time, and by that fact, in the present case, of neces- sity fall behind. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 239 evolution where there is absolutely no chronology — or at least the nearest approach we can make to one is to conclude, from internal evidence alone, that such or such parts of the Rig-Veda, such or such hymns, deities, conceptions, are " very early," " early," " later," " very late," within the period — unknown to us with any precision, but certainly em- bracing several, probably many, centuries — covered by the collection. Superlatives, like " earliest and latest," are out of the question where the limit escapes us at either end. 3. As to the designation, " lesser gods," it requires to be qualified even more. In the first place, by what standards do we know the lesser from the greater? We have only one, a very simple one: the place each occupies in the Rig-Veda — the number of hymns addressed to each, the frequency with which a given deity is mentioned in hymns addressed to others. It seems a crude standard ; yet on the whole it is not deceptive. Judged by it, Indra, Agni, Soma, at once stand out as the three kings of the Vedic Pantheon — and so they are. It would seem as though the tone of the hymns — the degree of fervor in the invocations and praise, the qualities and power ascribed to the different deities, should go for some- thing in deciding such a question ; but they hardly do, on account of the way the old Rishis have, as already noticed, of exalting the god they address, for the moment, above all the others, and ascribing to all in turn the same greater cosmical functions, such as spreading out the heavens, supporting the universe, keeping apart heaven, earth, etc., even to creating 240 VEDIC INDIA. Other gods, or, at all events, being first among them. The other standard, therefore, is the safest. But it stands only for the time, whatever that was, when the selection of the hymns was made, and — to borrow a word from other theologies — the canon of the Rig- Veda was established. That time was preceded by a past which we have no means of fathoming, and fol- lowed by a future as vast, in which the religion of the Rig-Veda was to pass through all the evolutions of Brahmanism and Hinduism. Some of the persons and myths of the Vedic Pantheon, therefore, are very old, while some again are just beginning to assert themselves. To the former class, probably, belong among others Parjanya and Rudra. If so, the great- ness of Rudra, as we saw, is in abeyance in the Rig- Veda, but it was to rise again and reach a higher climax than ever, when he became the dread Shiva — the Destroyer — of the great Brahmanic Triad. 4. Of the second class the most notable is ViSHNU, a solar deity and form of Agni, who holds a very modest place in the Rig-Veda, where he appears as a friend and comrade of Indra, stands by his side at the kill- ing of Vritra, and helps him to " open the stable and let out the cows." One peculiar trait is attached to him, and mentioned whenever he is addressed or spoken of : he is the god of the three strides. Purely naturalistic interpreters think of the expression as re- ferring to the strides of the Sun-god to the three stations of his course, at morning, noon, and evening. But closer study shows that there is a far deeper significance behind the seemingly simple myth — the three strides of Vishnu cover or pervade, earth, LESSER AND LATER GODS. 24 1 heaven, and the highest world of all, invisible to mortals, as clearly intimated by the verse : " We can from the earth know two of thy spaces ; thou alone, O Vishnu, knowest thine own highest abode " (VIL, 99, i). However that may be, nothing in the Rig- Veda presages the coming greatness of the god, the future second person — the Preserver — of the Brah- manic Triad, the rival of Shiva in the devotion of millions of worshippers, till all Brahmanic India became divided into two immense and fanatical sects, the Shivites and the Vishnuites. It appears, how. ever, that the earliest beginnings of these sects may be faintly traced as far back as the Rig- Veda, from a passage in one of the so-called historical hymns which relate the early struggles and wars of the Pen- jab Aryas.* 5. The god — Savitar — to whom is addressed the Gayatri, the most holy text in the whole Rig- Veda, to this day the daily prayer of millions of human beings — cannot properly be classed among the "lesser gods " ; but that he belongs among the later ones is shown by the complexity and by certain abstruse aspects of his being. That he is first and foremost a solar deity goes without saying. But a very puzzling fact about him is that he is some- times identified with the sun — Surya, — and some- times expressly distinguished from him — ^or it. Savitar is, as Muir says, "pre-eminently the golden deity " — golden-eyed, golden-armed, golden-handed, driving a golden car along ancient, dustless paths, beautifully laid out through space. There are ' See ch. viii., p. 303. 16 242 VEDTC INDIA. passages in which the two names — Savitar or Surya — are used convertibly and indiscriminately; for in- stance : " God Savitar raised his banner high, pro- viding hght for all the world ; Surya has filled earth and heaven and the vast ' middle region ' {anta- riksha, the atmosphere) with beams." They are unmistakably separated when Surya is called Savitar's beautiful bird (IV., 14, 2) ; or Savitar is said to be " invested with the rays of Surya," or to " bring Surya." Surya of course, in such cases, is to be taken as a common noun, standing for the material sun, and Savitar assumes towards it the relation of a higher being directing its movements, disposing of and distributing its light. 6. Another pecuharity of Savitar is that he repre- sents not only the bright sun of the golden day, but also the invisible sun of night, i.e., the sun in the mysterious, invisible land between West and East. He is associated as much with light as with darkness — the friendly darkness that brings repose and sleep to all that breathes. There are indeed hints of the kind in the descriptions of Surya, whose mares, " the Harits, draw without end now the bright light and now the dark" (I., 115, 5), and who seems to have a night-horse, which reverses the course of his chariot ' ; but they are few and vague ; while the semi-diurnal, semi-nocturnal nature of Savitar is one of that deity's essential characteristics. Those out- stretched hands of his, which shower light upon the worlds, also " firmly guide the starry host " ; after 1 See the chapter on Etasha (the horse in question) in A. Ber- gaigne's La Religion V^dique^ vol. ii-, pp. 330-333. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 243 arousing all creatures in the morning — " those with two feet and with four " — they bring them to rest in the evening. In all the hymns addressed to this god, which are held in eI peculiarly noble and lofty strain, this great and beneficent function of his is gratefully mentioned. " He who hastens hither through the dark aerial space, who lays to rest whatever mortal is, or immortal, God Savitar on his golden chariot comes towards us, surveying all creatures." (I., 35, 2.) "... Where is Surya now? Who knows it? Over which heaven do his rays extend ? " (I-, 35, 7-) "With golden hands comes hastening Savitar the god, pursuing busily his work 'twixt heaven and earth ; he drives away oppression, leads Surya forth, through the dark realm of air he hastens up to heaven." (I., 35, g.) Here we see that, when Savitar comes in the even- ing, the sun becomes invisible and shines on some other world ; when he comes in the morning, he brings back the sun. The difference between the two deities is made very plain, and we can best sum it up by saying that though, in translating, " Surya " can always be rendered by "the Sun," "Savitar" cannot. The " Evening Hymn " to Savitar (II., 38) is one of the finest in the collection. " . . . . 2. — The god his mighty hands, his arms outstretches in heaven above, and all things here obey him ; to his commands the waters are attentive, and even the rushing wind subsides before him. 3. — Driving his steeds, now he removes the harness and bids the wan- derer rest him from his journey ; he checks the serpent-smiter's ' eager onset ; at Savitar's command the kindly night comes. 4. — The weaver rolls her growing web together, and in the midst the workman leaves * A bird of prey. 244 VEDIC INDIA. his labors ; the god arises and divides the time, [night from day], — God Savitar appears, the never-resting. 5. — In every place where mortals have their dvv^elling, the house-fire far and vi'ide sheds forth its radiance, the mother gives her son the fairest portion, because the god has given him desire to eat. 6. — Now he returns who had gone forth for profit ; for home the longing wanderer's heart is yearning, and each, his task half finished, homeward journeys : this is the heavenly Inciter's ordinance. . . . 8. — The restless darting fish, at fall of evening, seeks where he may his refuge in the waters ; his nest the egg-born seeks, their stall the cattle; each in its place, the god divides the creatures." ' 7. So far the hymn might be addressed to the visible sun, " to him who clothes himself in all colors " when he climbs up the heights of heaven, and " wraps himself in a brown-red mantle" as he descends from them ; but Savitar is decidedly the invisible nocturnal sun, when the poet expressly says : " Thou dost journey through the night from West to East." Yet all this transparent naturalism by no means ex- hausts the complex and somewhat mystical personal- ity of this god. He has also a lofty moral side ; for ' From the German translation in Kaegi and Geldner's Siebenzig Lieder des Rig- Veda, English version of R. Arrowsmith in the Eng- lish edition of Kaegi's Rig- Veda. — Many readers will probably be struck by the great similarity, not only in the spirit, but even in the separate images, of this hymn, and the lovely Greek poem beginning ''' Hespere, paiita fereis," which has been so beautifully paraphrased by Byron in a famous stanza of Don Juan (Canto III., cvii.) : O Hesperus ! thou bringest all good things — Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer. To the young bird the parents' brooding wings. The welcome stall to the o'erlabor'd steer ; Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, Whate'er our household gods protect of dear. Are gather'd round us by thy look of rest ; Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 245 while Surya is only asked to "declare men sinless" before the Adityas, Savitar is implored by the repent- ant sinner in strains exactly similar to those ad- dressed to the great Aditya, Varuna himself. " Whatever offence we may have committed against the race of gods, through feebleness of understanding, or through violence after the manner of men — against gods and also against men, — in spite of all, O Savitar, take from us the sin." (IV., 54, 3.) Considered all in all, and taking into account also the etymology of the name, i. e., the meaning of the root from which it is derived and which is constantly alluded to in the characteristic epithets — Inciter, Enlivener, and the like — bestowed on the god, Savi- tar appears to represent pre-eminently the life-giving, generative force of nature, chiefly, but not exclu- sively, as manifested in the action of the sun. These qualities would easily be transferred to the spiritual world, when Savitar would naturally become the Enlightener, the quickener of the spirit, who, as he wakes all creatures to life and work, also wakes up the intellect, the moral faculties of men. This view also fully justifies such lofty epithets as "Lord of Creatures \^prajdpati\ having [and perhaps giving] all forms " {vishvartlpa), which it would be difificult to fit to a mere solar deity.^ As the worship of Fire in all its visible and invisible forms and abodes is really at the bottom of the Vedic religion, and the Sun itself is at times regarded only as one of its forms, Savitar could scarcely fail to be more or less identified with him, either as Sun or as Lightning. Many ^ Even Savitar's golden chariot is said to be vi3kvardj>a, omniform. 246 VEDIC INDIA. passages point to this abstruser mystical doctrine, as well as the name of Apam Napat (Child of the Waters) — Agni's own surname — which is given him more than once. His connection with Soma and the Soma sacrifice is also beyond doubt, and he is said to have given immortality to the gods. The heavenly Soma being no other than the anirita or drink of immortality, this well accords with the nature of a vivifier and creator. 8. There is a remarkable verse (III., 55, 19) which gives us the following startling combination : " TvASHTAR Savitar, the god of many forms [viskvanlpa], has produced and nourished all creatures, and all these beings are his own. . . . He created both the world-cups, [heaven and earth] ; all they are both filled with is his own." In this passage (and in one other where they appear joined together in the same way), one of these names would seem to be an epithet of the other, or else they are identical, i. c, two names of one and the same person. Yet Tvashtar in all other cases stands out alone as an independent, though not very clearly characterized, deity. He has been called somewhat sweepingly " the artificer of the gods," and that certainly covers one side of his nature to which his name alludes, as it is said to be derived, with a slight alteration, from a root meaning " to make, to construct." He is seldom mentioned in the hymns without some such epithet as " skilful-handed," " most cunning workman," and the like. For it was Tvashtar who forged Indra's thunderbolt, the golden, with a thousand points and LESSER AND LATER GODS. 247 a hundred edges, and who sharpened the axe of another god, Brahmanaspati, the " Lord of Prayer " ; it is he, '' the omniform," who gives their shapes to all living things, even to the unborn young of men and animals; he also knows the art of making the best cups from which the gods drink the Soma ; especially, he fashioned one wonderful sacrificial cup which was his pride of workmanship and with which he had a peculiar experience. 9. There were three brothers, the RiBHUS — some say pupils of Tvashtar — who rivalled him in skill. They had fashioned Indra's chariot and horses, and the Ashvins' three-wheeled chariot ; they had re- juvenated the wonderful cow which produces all things at will ; nay, they made " the two Old Ones," their " two parents," young again. But they were not gods ; only pious men and sacrificers. Once Agni, the messenger of the gods, came to them and gave them this message : " Ye are to make four cups out of the one ; this is why I come hither. If ye perform this, ye will receive equal honors with the gods." They did perform the astounding feat, where- upon they boldly drove to heaven in their chariot, to " gracious Savitar's abode," where they received from him the gift of immortality, and consequently the right to partake of the heavenly Soma and to be in- vited to men's Soma-sacrifices. But Tvashtar was incensed at the liberty taken with his greatest work and chose to consider it a sacrilege ; he even pro- posed to the gods to '' kill these men " (of course before they had yet tasted the amrita), and was so mortified when his malice was baffled, that he slunk 248 VEDIC INDIA. away and hid himself among " the gods' wives " (I., no and 161). 10. *' Of what was made that one cup out of which you cunningly fashioned four?" This direct ques- tion is asked by one of the Rig poets (IV., 35, 4). It has been, and still is, asked by our scholars. But answered— that is another matter. The difificulty is in this case particularly great, because the person- ality of Tvashtar is almost too much blurred for recognition. He is evidently a very ancient god, fallen from his high estate, with a cycle of myths hopelessly incomplete and mutilated, and partly de- formed by later rehandling. Still it is said that ** out of the clash of opinions springeth light " ; and after careful comparison of a score of interpretations, differing in some points, agreeing in others, the fol- lowing may be ventured upon as coming probably near to the mark, because offering a comparatively unstrained construction of the remarkable myth of Tvashtar and the Ribhus, and fitting tolerably well the various passages which touch on it. 11. Tvashtar-Savitar-Vishvarupa — "the Om- niform * Maker and Vivifier " — was originally one divine person. Then — and this is a common and universal process of mythological multiplication — the single but threefold designation split itself into three separate ones. Men invoked now Tvashtar, now Savitar, till their original oneness was wellnigh obliterated ; even Vishvarupa — " omniform " or " multiform " — though an epithet not unfrequently ' " Omniform " not only in the sense of assuming all forms, but of giving them, being, in Muir's words, the arch-type of all forms. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 249 bestowed on various deities, such as Agni, Soma, Indra, took an individuality of its own and became a son of Tvashtar who tends his cattle, and is one of Indra's most hated enemies. This is how thins^s stand in the Rig-Veda, where only two passages, by giving the complete combination of three names, revive an all but obliterated memory.' It is proba- ble that Tvashtar-Savitar was a Sky-god, whereupon Savitar retained all the gracious, vivifying qualities of a heavenly power specially connected with the beneficent Sun, while Tvashtar became his counter- part and represented the stern, baleful, and threat- ening aspects of the heavens, standing to Savitar much as Rudra to Varuna (see p. 209).'' Under this explanation it appears quite natural that Tvash- tar should be the special — and morose, grudging — keeper of the heavenly Soma. The sacrificial cup which he makes for the gods is, therefore, most probably — the Moon, " the bright bowl of Soma " (see p. 180). The Ribhus are the genii of the Sea- sons. It is very possible that originally there was also only one Ribhu — the Year, who then easily split himself into three brothers — the three seasons ; for the Vedic Aryas divided the year into only three seasons — the rainy, the hot, and the fall. The Rib- hus' great feat consisted in dividing the one Soma ' Hillebrandt {^Vedische Mythologie, i., p. 514) remarks of Tvash- tar : " All that is said of him warrants the supposition that we have before us the ruins of a large cycle of myths, which, having been originated outside of the Rig- Veda tribes, did not greatly arouse their interest." ^ May not, at some untraceable time, the three names together have been joint descriptive predicates of the primeval Sky-god, Dyaus ? 250 VEDIC INDIA. bowl into four — the phases of the moon : the grow- ing, the full, the waning, and the dark.* The fin- ishing touch to this myth is the twelve days' rest which they took " in the house of Savitar." These are the twelve intercalary days added by the early Indian astronomers to the 354 days of the lunar year, at the time of the winter solstice,'^ a period of rest during which the sun and the seasons them- selves seem to stand still, awaiting the beginning of the new year, when they commence their work, " pro- ducing vegetation on the mountains and waters in the valleys." The other magic feats of the Ribhus are as easily explained. It is the seasons that fashion Indra's chariot and horses, for the great thunder- storms come only at certain times of the year; they restore the youth of their old parents. Heaven and Earth ; likewise that of the ever-productive cow — the Earth. As to Vishvarupa, a monster with three heads, which are all struck off by Indra, he clearly represents the " omniform " clouds, which may well be the offspring of the Sky regarded as a malignant being, an evil magician. 12. But it is not only in the person of his son that Tvashtar experiences Indra's hostility. He is him- self the object of it, chiefly as the grudging keeper of ^ This is the explanation of Hillebrandt ; only he makes out Tvash- tar to be the moon itself. Ludwig, on the other hand, agrees with him about the Ribhus being the seasons, but he sees in Tvashtar the sun, and the cup to him is the year, which the Ribhus divide into the four seasons. It will be seen that neither of these theories " fits" so well as a whole and in details as that given in the text. ^ The solar year of 365 days was introduced much later, probably in connection with the worship of Vishnu. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 25 1 the heavenly Soma, in the use of which Indra, as we know, brooks no stinting. From the confused and fragmentary accounts of the god's childhood and early exploits, we see that he possessed himself of the coveted beverage by violence, and then pro- ceeded to vent his ire and try his newborn strength upon the keeper of it, whom he overpowered and hurled down, seizing him by one foot. (See p. 204.) For Tvashtar is Indra's father. Two texts estab- lish the fact beyond a doubt : " Tvashtar fashioned for him the thunderbolt to be wielded in battle." (I., 61, 6.) " The thunderbolt which his father fashioned for him some time ago just suits his arm." (II., 17, 6.) Indra, scarce born, drinks the Soma in the highest heaven (III., 32, 10). The mother who bore him poured it out for him in the house of his great father (III., 48, 2). Scarcely has the babe tasted the stimulating beverage, when his strength grows on him : "Vigorous, victorious, of might transcendant, he shaped his body to his will ; just born, he overcame Tvashtar, stole the Soma, and drank it in the vats." (III., 48, 4.) " Who made thy mother a widow ? " asks the poet (IV., 18, 12). Evidently Indra himself, by slaying his father. — " Who wanted to kill thee while resting or travelling?" Probably Tvashtar, in anger at being robbed of the Soma. — " What god came to thy assistance when thou didst seize thy father by the foot and hurl him down ? " Here we have the whole myth, complete and clear; 252 VEDIC INDIA. only, after the manner of the Rig-Veda, we do not get it in a connected form, but must fish it out in bits from texts out of the different books. There is nothing there that does not fit in beautifully with the identification of Tvashtar as a Sky-god of sombre and malevolent aspect, supplanted in the devotion of the Indian Aryas by the more popular — and more immediately useful — Warrior-god. Many more short texts could be picked out which would confirm this remarkable myth, but could not make it more com- plete. And what more natural than that the Light- ning — for the god who wields the thunderbolt is nothing else in reality — should be the son of the frowning, angry sky ? 13. But we have not done with Tvashtar yet. He figures in another story-myth, as remarkable as that of the cup, and one that has given as much food to disputed interpretations, both among native com- mentators and modern European scholars. It is the myth of the birth of the Ashvins. The story is told completely, though, as usual, not without obscurity, in the following too famous passage (X., 17, 1-2) : " Tvashtar makes a wedding for his daughter and all the world comes to it. The mother of Yama, the wedded wife of the great Vivasvat, disappeared. — They [the gods] hid the immortal one from mortals and having created another just lilce her, they gave her to Vivasvat. Then SaranyO bore the two Ashvins and, having done so, she deserted the two twins," ' ' " Or the two pairs of twins." This would include Yama's twin- sister YamI, though she is not named in the text. She does, however, appear once in the Rig, in a most peculiar dialogue with Yama. But this piece is of very uncertain date, and bears the imprint of quite late Brahmanism. So that Yami may very well have been a subsequent addition, for symmetry's sake, and also because the name of Yama generally means " a twin." LESSER AND LATER GODS. 253 We already know that Yama was a son of Vivasvat. We now find that the Ashvins were Vivasvat's sons also, and grandsons of Tvashtar, and learn that their mother was that ungracious god's daughter. So far we know who Saranyu was. But what she was is the question that has been so differently answered by the various schools of learned mythologists. " The Dawn," say those who are inclined to see the Sun and Dawn in most heavenly couples. " The Storm- cloud," reply those who think that the atmospheric drama absorbed the attention of the Penjab Aryas almost to the exclusion of other natural phenomena.' Neither of these interpretations is exempt from a certain lameness.- For the Dawn can hardly be the mother of the early twilight ^\\\q\\ precedes her, even allowing for Vedic inconsistencies, though there is nothing amiss with the myth which makes her the Ashvins' sister or even their bride, who on one occa- sion is said to have mounted their chariot. Again, the Stormcloud seems to have even less to do with a phenomenon of light : the two belong to different worlds — the Atmosphere and the Sky. But Sara- nyu's name is too suggestive : it means " the fleet," " the running," and nothing occurred to the first in- vestigators that it would fit, except the Dawn or the Stormcloud. A younger scholar proposes a far more plausible solution : " When we are told," he says, " that the Ashvins arrive at the end or in the last watch of night and gradually spread over the whole ' As leaders of the first-named school we may consider Professors Max Miiller and Angelo de Gubernatis, while in the van of the latter stands the no less eminent Adalbert Kuhn. 254 VEDIC INDIA. horizon, dispersing or destroying the darkness and bringing daylight to all creatures, we surely cannot take either the Dawn or the Storm- cloud for their mother, but must, in the order of nature, look for some other phenomenon which precedes the dawn and even the twilight represented by the Ashvins, and that can be no other than — Night. The adjective saranyii should therefore be completed by the noun nakie, and then interpreted as ' the fleet night ' (in coming and in vanishing)." ' 14. That the Night should be the daughter of the Sky in its unamiable aspect (Tvashtar) and the mother of the Twilight Twins, is satisfactory ; that she should first be the mother of Yama, — if Yama be, as Hillebrandt so ably contends, the Moon, — is highly so. As to her husband, " the great Vivasvat," he is often, and in post-vedic times always, identified with the Sun ; not always or necessarily, however, in the Rig- Veda. For " Vivasvat," like most proper names, is originally an adjective, signifying " bright, luminous." Now there are other bright and luminous things besides the sun ; what they are, the context in each separate instance must help us to find out. And the context of many passages in the hymns show beyond a doubt that Vivasvat can also repre- sent the bright, luminous Sky. Here are some : " Matarishvan, the messenger [of the gods] brought Agnifrom afar, from vivasvat [the Sky]." (VI., 8, 4.) "With your chariot, fleeter than thought, which the Ribhus fashioned, come O Ashvins, — the chariot at the harnessing of which ' Dr. L. Myriantheus, Die Afviits oder Arischen Dioskurett (1876), p. 57. He points in confirmation to the Homeric expression " the fleet night," and to the fact that Leda, the mother of the Greek Dioskouroi (the " Sons of Zeus " — the exact equivalent of the Aryan ndpaid-diva, the " Sons of the Sky "), has long ago been identified with Night. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 255 the Daughter of the Sky [the Dawn] is born, also Day and Night, both splendid, from [or out of] Vivasvat [the bright, luminous sky]." (X.,39, 12.)' And especially : "After staying overnight with Vivasvat, O Ashvins, come hither to drink Soma, drawn by our songs." (X., 46, 13.) Vivasvat being their father, it is not strange that they should stay with him ; in other words, the twi- light may be imagined as waiting overnight in the sky before appearing.* To sum up : Saranyu, the fleet Night, is the daugh- ter of Tvashtar, the stern and frowning Sky, who gives her to wife to Vivasvat, the luminous Sky ; she becomes the mother of Yama, the Moon ; then the gods conceal her, the immortal, from mortals : the Night vanishes ; but, in doing so, she gives birth to the Twilight Twins, the Ashvins, whom she per- force must leave as well as her first-born. The myth is simple and transparent enough ; only the second or substituted wife remains unaccounted for. But the commentators tell us that she gave birth to Manu, the mythical sage and sacrificer, the progeni- tor of the human race, thus formulating the ancient ' This alludes to the later and already corrupt belief in the Ashvins coming both in the morning and at night. ^ See Myriantheus, Die A^vins, pp. 4-13. We may as well mention here the curious custom of giving to sacrificers, by courtesy, the name of vivasvat. By the act of sacrificing, the worshipper enters into communion with the gods, becomes, for the time being, one of them. Thus in Egypt, every man received after death, by courtesy, the title of " Osiris," because it was hoped he had attained blessedness in the bosom of the god. 256 VEDIC INDIA. belief in the heavenly origin of mankind.' Who she was, i. e., what she was meant to represent, has never been found out. The myth itself, how- ever, in the attempt at explanation, was handled and rehandled, added to and ornamented, until it became almost hopelessly obscure, and it was necessary to return to the original Rig texts, and them only, in order to restore it to its meaning in the order of natural phenomena. 15. There is another mysterious being, another mother of twins, whose name, Sarama, shows her to be somewhat akin in nature to Saranyu — also a " fleet one," a " runner." With her offspring, the twin Sarameyas dogs, the messengers of Yama, we are already acquainted (see p. iSa).** She herself appears to have been Indra's special messenger, em- ployed by him on diplomatic and scouting errands. We have an unusually detailed and complete narra- tive of one such expedition in the Rig-Veda. The Panis — the avaricious traders and robbers — had stolen the milk kine on which the race of men chiefly depends for nourishment. Indra prepared to go to their rescue in company with Brihaspati — the Lord of Prayer — and the nine Angiras, the heavenly singers and sacrificers. But he first sent ^ Manu is often used simply in the sense of " man." The etymo- logical meaning is " the thinker." The other habitual designation of our race is " mortal," as opposed to the '* immortals" — gods. Man, therefore, was to the old Aryas " he who thinks " and " he who dies " — surely a definition as profound as comprehensive. "^ Probably on account of her connection with these dogs, Sarama was subsequently made out to be herself a dog. There is, however, no allusion to this in the Rig-Veda. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 2^7 Sarama to reconnoitre. She went " on the right path " and found the strong stable, a cave in the rock, through a cleft of which she heard the cows' lowing. She went on until she came across the Pani-robbers, between whom and herself there en- sued the following dialogue, one of the most re- markable pieces in the Rig-Veda (X., io8). The Panis begin : The Panis : " With what intention did Sarama reach this place? for the way is far and leads tortuously away. What is thy wish with us? Didst travel safely? [or " how was the night ? "] How didst thou cross the waters of the Rasa ? " ^ Sarama / " I came sent as the messenger of Indra, desiring, O Panis, your great treasures. This preserved me from the fear of crossing, and thus I crossed the waters of the Rasa." T//e Panis : " Who is he? what looks he like, this Indra, whose herald you have hastened from afar? Let him come here, we will make friends with him, then he may be the herdsman of our cows." Sarama : " Ye cannot injure him, but he can injure, whose herald I have hastened from afar. Deep rivers cannot overwhelm him ; you, Panis, soon shall be cut down by Indra." The Panis : " Those cows, O Sarama, which thou cam'st to seek, are flying round the ends of the sky. O darling, who would give up to thee without a fight ? for, in truth, our weapons too are sharp." Saramd : " Not hurtful are your words, O Panis, and though your wretched bodies were arrow-proof, though the way to you be hard to go, little will Brihaspati care." The Panis : " That store, O Sarama, is fast within the rock — 't is full with horses, cows, and treasures ; Panis watch it who are good watchers ; thou art come in vain. . . ." Saramd : " The Rishis will come here, fired with Soma, Ayasia, and the Angiras, the Nine. They will divide this stable of cows. Then the Panis will spit out this speech [wish it unspoken]." The Panis : " Of a surety, Sarama, thou art come hither driven ^ The Rasa — a mythical river, deep and dangerous : the waters of Darkness or of Death. 17 258 VEDIC INDIA. by the violence of the gods : let us make thee our sister ; go not away again. We will give thee part of the cows, O darling." Saramd : "I know nothing of brotherhood or sisterhood; Indra knows it and the awful Angiras. They seemed to me anxious for their cows when I came ; therefore get away from here, O Panis, get far away." Sarama's scouting having proved more successful than her diplomatical effort, she returned to those who sent her, to act as guide. Swift and sure of foot, she walked before them, taking them along the broad and ancient heavenly path which leads to the one goal. As they approached the rock, which she was first to reach, the loud singing of the Angiras mingled with the lowing of the cows in the cave. Indra and Brihaspati now came up ; the rock opened with a great crash under the blows of Indra's mace, and Brihaspati led forth the cows, driving them along as the wind drives the storm-cloud. The Panis were dismayed ; Vala, the cave-demon, mourned for his beautiful cows as the tree mourns for its foliage when it is stripped bare by frost.' 16. This beautifully and dramatically developed story-myth speaks for itself, and it is only the identi- fication of Sarama, which gives rise to the usual difference of opinions. She, too, has been said to be the Dawn, and the Stormcloud ; but she is so spe- cially characterized as the precursor of a violent thunder-storm that, if a naturalistic interpretation ' The narrative is given in words taken from the Rig-Veda. Only the passages are so short and scattered, it would be cumbersome to give chapter and verse for them all. This particular myth, with the active part Brihaspati plays in it, was a great favorite, for it is alluded to innumerable times, though Sarama is mentioned only in half a dozen texts. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 259 be adopted, — no doubt the original one, — one is more tempted to concur in that which makes her out to be the wind which precedes a heavy rain. It is only the wind that can be called the scout of the heavens ; only the wind that may be said to try to bring away ** the cows " from the solid black mountain banked up against the horizon, and to be unable to accom- plish it until the storm-god and his troop follow the " broad trail " opened for them and break open the rock. This explanation is greatly confirmed by the fact that Sarama's canine offspring, the Sarameya dogs, undoubtedly are the evening twilight twins (probably in symmetrical opposition to the morning twilight twins, the Ashvins), who have inherited their mother's scouting and cattle-driving qualities, — only the cattle they are after are men (see p, 182), — and most certainly represent the twilight together with and inseparably from the breeze which, in Southern climes, invariably rises immediately after sunset.' That, like the Ashvins, these twins may, in the course of time, have been separated into morning and even- ing, is more than likely ; indeed one Brahmana, in one of those rare passages of profound poetical beauty ("rare" in every sense of the word), which reward the patient searcher, calls Day and Night, " the outstretched arms of Death." 17. So much for this most lucid nature-myth. But nature-myths have a way of becoming transformed ' The name Sarameya has been philologically identified beyond a doubt with that of the Hellenic god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, the sweet whistler and musician, the stealer of cows and guide of the dead — and Hermes is certainly the wind. 26o VEDIC INDIA. in the course of time ; and if they do not actually descend to earth and become the stories of old-time heroes and sages, they can undergo changes to suit the developing spirit of the race and age without being taken from their celestial habitat. This ap- pears to have been the case with the myth of Sarama, even before it assumed its fixed and finished form in the canon of the hymns/ For in this form latest research finds good reason to see a combina- tion of nature-myth and spiritual, or rather ritualistic, elements, introduced by those all-pervading priestly influences which were soon to culminate in the tyranny of Brahmanism. In this transformed myth Sarama represents no longer a power of nature, but that of the human Prayer, more correctly the sacred word — the mantra ; for, as early as the Vedic times, prayer was no longer the spontaneous out- pouring of the heart, as it must have been at least sometimes and with some of the first composers of the hymns, the ancient Rishis, but a strictly regulated reciting of texts considered as sacred and powerful in themselves, with a sort of talismanic power, and credited with compelling force over the elements, i. e., the gods. It will be seen that Sarama, as a personification of this Prayer, can well be imagined as " going on the right path " (" the path of rila," represented on earth by the sacrificial rite), ** finding the cows," frightening the robbers, then guiding the god to the strong stable and stand- ing by while he breaks it open. This secondary interpretation will be very convincing if we consider ' See Bergaigne, La Religion Ve'dique, vol. ii., pp. 31 1-32 1. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 261 who Indra's attendants are on this occasion : not the Maruts, but the Angiras — a .troop of priestly demi- gods, supposed to be divinized ancient sacrificers, in reality themselves personifications of the sacred hymns which they go on everlastingly singing on their aerial way. Now the heavenly form of the sacred song is the voice of the thunder. When the loud singing of the Angiras mingles with the lowing of the captive cows, of course we know we have to imagine the long swelling and rolling thunder of a southern storm, answered by muffled mutterings from the distant mountains, while the " loud crash " with which the cave-stable is burst open is the short rattling clap of the bolt that strikes. For all heavenly music is produced either by the thunder or the wind or the rain. And thunder is the Sacred Word, the Sacred Hymn par excellence, the prototype of all speech, the language known to gods, but not under- stood of men.' 18. Then — Indra's companion. It is not Vishnu, or Soma, or even Agni in his direct natural form ; it is Brihaspati or Brahmanaspati — Fire in his most august, sacrificial, and sacerdotal form, the " Lord of Prayer," the leader of hymns, the institutor of worship and rites ; in a word, the divine hotar and purohita, the priest of god and men, having himself the name of " Angiras" — the leaderof the Nine, and the divine personification of both the holiness and the power of the brahma — Prayer, as represented by the sacred songs — sdman, or sacred texts — mantra? * See farther, pp. 269-270. ^ Brahma^ from a root meaning " to penetrate, to pervade ; it is also contained in the name Brihaspati. 262 VEDIC INDIA. When therefore he is called pathikrit — " path- preparer " ' — we are not puzzled as to what path is meant : it is the same that " the old Rishis have pre- pared," that on which Sarama led the gods, the broad and ancient heavenly path which leads to the one goal — the path of Sacrifice. In the hymns addressed to this priestly deity, he is credited with all the deeds and works elsewhere ascribed to Indra and all the other great nature-gods, whose supremacy thus seems to be centred in him or rather transferred to him, and numberless short interpolated passages bring him into older hymns where he is manifestly out of place. Indeed we have in him the connecting link between pure Vedism and rising Brahmanism. For not only are the Brahmans the men who wield the power of the brakma, but the line of abstract speculation, initiated by this creation — and reflection — of the priestly class (soon to be a caste), gradually supersedes the old joyous, vigorous nature-worship, and culminates in the evolution of the bralima (neuter noun) into an all-pervading but latent spir- itual essence and presence, and its final manifesta- tion in the person of the supreme god and creator Brahma (masculine), the head of the great Brahma- nic Triad. 19. It has been remarked that "all the gods whose names are compounded with /«//[" lord of — "] must be reckoned among the more recent. They ' The exact equivalent of the Latin highest priestly title, pontifex — literally "bridge-maker." Pons, poiitis originally meant not a bridge, but a path : a bridge is a path across a river. The Teutonic and Slavic languages have retained the old meaning. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 263 were the products of reflection." ' It should never be forgotten, at the same time, that such secondary mythical persons (abstractions) must of necessity have developed out of primary ones (nature-gods), and the Rig-Veda shows us exactly how it was done. " Brahmanaspati " is repeatedly used in the hymns as an adjective, an epithet of Agni. It does not follow from this that, after the epithet is detached from the name it qualifies and has be- come a separate person, that person should be con- sidered as always identical with the bearer of that name, for with an individuality it also assumes in- dividual life, and begins its own course of evolution ; but the original connection between the two will always be apparent, as that of Brihaspati with sacri- ficial fire. Thus again Savitar, Soma, Indra, each in turn receive the epithet of Prajapati — "lord of descendants," or, as the word is more commonly translated, " lord of creatures." In the late stage of Vedic theology, the dawning era of abstractions, we always have Prajapati mentioned, and occasionally invoked as a separate deity. It is only in post-vedic Brahmanism, however, that he attains the supreme honor of being identified with Brahma himself. Another connecting link; another product of the period of transition. Such also is Vishvakarman — " the fabricator of the universe," originally a title given to Indra, Surya, and other great gods, then an independent deity, tending, in true Vedic fashion, to absorb the functions, qualities, and ^ Roth, "Brahma and the Brahmans," Journal of the German Oriental Society, vol. i., pp. 66 _^. 264 VEDIC INDIA. honors of all other gods. Two hymns are con- secrated to him (X., 81 and 82), where he is described as " the one god who has on every side eyes, on every side a face, arms, feet ; who, when producing heaven and earth, shapes them with his arms and wings. , . . "Who is our father, our creator, maker, — who every place doth know and every creature, — by whom alone to gods their names were given, — to whom all other creatures go, to ask him." Among these gods of the second formation we may also class HiRANYAGARBHA, — " the Golden Embryo," or " the Golden Child," evidently origi- nally a name of the Sun, — who goes the same way of abstraction which leads these gods to the supreme rank. A most beautiful hymn (X., 121) is addressed to him, but it properly belongs, as well as the greater portion of those to Vishvakarman, among those that illustrate the beginnings of speculative philosophy in the Rig- Veda.' 20. These gods of what we call the secondary or speculative formation, whose connection with the primary nature-gods is clearly discernible, should be carefully distinguished from deities of a third class still — the purely allegorical — i. e., mere personifica- tions of abstractions and qualities that never had any existence in physical nature, such as Faith (Shraddha), Liberality (DakshinA, in the sense of largess to the priests) Wrath (Manyus, the right- eous wrath which animates those who fight demons and earthly foes). This, as we have seen, is the favorite myth-form of the moralizing Eranians,'^ and ^ See farther on, chapter xi. * See Story of Media, etc., pp. Tiff. LESSER AND LATER GODS. 265 does not at all come natural to the Aryas of India in the earlier time of their cheerful nature-worship. It is therefore but scantily represented in the Rig- Veda, but blossoms forth abundantly in the late por- tions of the Atharva-Veda, where Time, Desire, the Breath of Life, etc., are addressed as divine persons, with all the pompousness of the earlier hymns to Indra, Agni, Soma, and the others. In the Brah- manas this element predominates more and more. 21. It may have been noticed that the feminine element is almost absent from our sketch of the Vedic Pantheon. So it is from the Rig- Veda it- self. There is really only one " great goddess," with an individuality, a story, and functions proper to her and to no other divine being, and that is Ushas, the Dawn. Sarama is not a goddess ; still less Saranyu "The wives of the gods" — -the Devapatnis — are spoken of vaguely, collectively, but they are easily transformed into " wives of the demons — Ddsapat- nts,'' — for they are in reality neither more nor less than " the waters " or " cows," which are eternally fought for, captured, and rescued. And when these " wives" so far emerge out of their misty unreality as to be coupled with one or other particular god, they assume their husbands' names with a feminine ending: Varunani, Indrani, Agnayi, Ashvini. They are only pale, unsubstantial reflections. 22. Neither can the Waters and Rivers properly be called goddesses, though they are treated with extreme reverence, and frequently invoked as the holiest and purest of created things. When " the Waters " — Apas — are spoken of in a general vva}-, 266 VEDIC INDIA. the heavenly waters are meant, as a rule — the Mothers of Agni, and one of the abodes of Soma ; hence their mysterious and exceeding holiness, which is naturally transferred to the terrestrial waters, if only because the latter play an important part in sac- rifice as one of the ingredients of the Soma-beverage. Yet, although the Waters' mystical purifying powers are" certainly alluded to in such texts as " . . . these divine ones carry away defilement ; I come up out of them pure and cleansed," there is no doubt that their physical qualities were fully realized and appre- ciated : their cleanness, their wholesomeness, their bountifulness as the fosterers of vegetation and of cattle, and as wealth-givers. They are then thought of chiefly in their form of rivers, and are com- pared, often very poetically, to various things loved of the people : now to stately milch-cows, now to fleet and graceful mares ; they are playful sisters, they are kindly mothers. There is a famous " River- hymn " — Nadistiiti (X., 75) — celebrating by name the rivers of early Aryan India, a treasure of prehis- torical geography. For there we find all the rivers of the Sapta-Sindhavah (see pp. 107, 108, note), be- sides several which it has been impossible so far to identify with certainty. They may possibly belong to a more eastern and less familiar region than the old Riverland, a region only just entered by the Aryas in their slow onward march — mainly in search of new pastures and more room to spread in.* For this is the only hymn in the whole ' "We have come to a pastureless land . . ." (the sandy tract west of the Djumna) " . . , The earth, though wide, is too close for us : show us the way in battle, O Brihaspati ! . . ." LESSER AND LATER GODS. . 267 collection in which unmistakable mention is made of the Ganga and Yamuna (Ganges and Djumna), show- ing it to be one of the very latest. But they are merely named, as two among many ; while fully half of the verses are devoted to the glorification of the Sindhu (Indus) who " flashing, sparkling, gleaming, in her majesty, the unconquer- able, the most abundant of streams, beautiful as a handsome, spotted mare, rolls her waters over the levels." Evidently the centre of gravity of Aryan spiritual life had not yet been displaced. 23. Among the rivers there is one which, from the extreme reverence cherished for it, and the manifold aspects it assumes, comes nearest to the rank of a real goddess, a divine Person, receiving oblations and invited to partake of Soma. It is the Saras- VATI. We have seen (p. 109) that, in the late Vedic period and the whole of post-vedic classical antiquity, the name and the great sacredness attaching thereto, belong to a rather insignificant river, which at the present time loses itself in the sands of a tract of desert, and which even in its early and palmier days could never have possessed much importance, unless it were, as at one time, the farthest eastern boundary of the Aryan domain beyond which Agni " Vaish- vanara " ("who burns for all men") had not been carried — i. e., the sacrificial flame, personifying Aryan conquest and Aryan propaganda. Nor is it possible that this Sarasvati should ever have been described in such superlative terms of admiration as the follow- ing: (VIL, 95, 1-2): 268 VEDIC INDIA. "With great noise of waters, bringing nourishment, Sarasvati breaks forth ; she is to us a firm bulwark, a fortress of brass. Like to a warrior in the chariot race, she speeds along, the sindhn [river], leaving all other waters far behind. " Sarasvati comes down the purest of streams, from the mountains to the sa7nudra ; ' bringing wealth and prosperity to the wide world, she flows with milk and honey for those that dwell by her banks." In early Vedic times, (and the book in which this passage occurs is a late one) there was only one river that justified such a description — the Indus. Indeed this passage has led to the positive identification of the Sarasvati as the Indus. This undoubtedly was the original name of the great river of the West, till it came to be familiarly spoken of simply as SindJiu, " the River." After the Aryas had advanced a considerable distance eastward, crossing river after river, they reached one which arrested their progress for a time. Set- tlements arose along its course, and it inherited the name that for some reason was dear and sacred to the Aryas. For what reason ? From ancient memo- ries and association. For " Sarasvati " is the exact Sanskrit equivalent of the Old-Eranian " Hara- QAITI," the Avestan name of the great river (mod- ern Helmend) of Eastern Eran — Afghanistan and Kabul — where some of the separating Indo-Eranian tribes certainly sojourned before they summoned courage to face the stony wall of the Suleiman range and thread its wild, narrow passes. Was it not natural ' Sai7iudra — "gathering of waters" ; in the Rig- Veda not the sea or ocean, but the broad expanse formed by the reunion with the Indus of the " five rivers," whose waters are brought to it by the Pantchanada (see p. 107). LESSER AND LATER GODS. 269 that they should have thus perpetuated the memory of what had long been home ? This beautiful and natural solution is suggested by the results of latest researches,' and confirmed from a most unexpec- ted quarter by a curt mention in the Atharva-Veda (VI., 100,) of three Sarasvatis — a mention which, being long unexplained, has been another of the puzzles which confront scholars at every step. Pro- bably no explanation was needed at the time, of things which had not passed out of remembrance. 24. Sarasvati in post-vedic times is chiefly praised and invoked as the goddess of eloquence, though she never lost her identity as river-goddess. We our- selves speak of " a rich, a free, an easy flow of words," of "fluency of speech," of a " torrent of eloquence," — so the poetical imagery which underlies this trans- formation will not appear far-fetched or strained. In the Rig-Veda we do not yet find her thus spe- cialized, but she is associated with sacrifice and the hymns in a way to leave little doubt that, in the later portions of it, she already represented the elo- quence of sacred poetry, possibly even the different sacred metres which were extolled and deified to such an extraordinary extent in the Brahmanas. 25. The same may be said in a still greater meas- ure of another goddess, VAcH,'^ — personified Speech, — who in the Rig- Veda already (in the latest book of course, the tenth) is invested with much of the ' See chiefly Hillebrandt Vedische Mythologie, vol. i., pp. gq-ioo. It will be noticed that the Helmend ends, not in a sea, but in a large lake, to which the name of samudra would apply perfectly. * Ch pronounced as in church. 2^0 VEDiC INDIA usual pomp of Brahmanic metaphysics, as a " most adorable," " widely pervading," wealth-bringing deity of " many abodes," but not to extravagance; the personification — or rather allegory — does not pass the bounds of fine, even noble poetry, and is more- over distinctly traceable to the natural phenomenon from which it is evolved. For sublimity, few con- ceptions can equal this of our race's earliest poets — a conception which lingers still in the mythical poetry of later nations in other lands. Primeval speech is the voice of the gods, speaking in thunder and storm ; it is Vdch, — the Sacred Word, majestic and compelling, beneficent and wise — in its heavenly abode. But it is not for men. To them Vach descends in the form of Speech, and lo ! " I . . . men with their earliest utterances, gave names to things, and all which they had lovingly treasured within them, the most ex- cellent and spotless, was disclosed. 2. Wherever the wise have uttered speech \ydc]i\ with discrimination, sifting it as meal with a sieve, there friend knows friend and auspicious fortune waits on their words. 3. Through sacrifice they followed the track of Vach, and found her entered into the Rishis. Taking her, they divided her into many portions, and now the seven Rishis sing her praise. 4. One man, seeing, sees not Vach ; another, hearing, hears her not ; to another she willingly discloses herself, as a well-attired and loving wife displays her person to her husband. 5. One man is said to be secure in her favor — and he is not to be overwhelmed in poetical contests ; another lives in unprofitable brooding : he has only heard Vach, and she is to him without fruit or flower. 6. He who forsakes a well-meaning friend, he has no portion in Vach, and what he hears he hears in vain : unknown to him is the path of virtue. 7. And even those who enjoy her witli equally understanding eye and ear, are unequal in the moving of the spirit : some are lakes which reach up to shoulder and to mouth, and some are shallow waters good to bathe in. 8. When competing priests practice devotion in sayings born of LESSER AND LATER GODS. 2/1 the spirit's might, one lags far behind in wisdom, while others prove themselves true priests. 9. One sits and produces songs like blos- soms ; another sings them in loud strains ; one discourses sapiently of the essence of things ; another measures out the sacrifice according to the rite, 10. And friends are proud of their friend, when he comes among them as leader of the poets. He corrects their errors, helps them to prosperity, and stands up, ready for the poetical contest." (X., 71). The beauty, dignity, and ennobling uses of speech could scarcely be appraised with finer feeling or apter touches ; or the difference between him who seeing, sees not, and hearing, hears not, and him to whom the gift is given ; between the spirit deep as the lake and the mind shallow as the bathing pool ; between him who blossoms into song, and him who unprofitably cudgels his brains and for whom the goddess has neither fruit nor flower. Only, we must beware of putting more modern a sense into passages of this kind than they will bear. We must remember that the poetry we have to do with here, though god-given, is not the free, unfettered gift that it is to us : the goddess must be sought through sacrifice, which means that she comes loaded with all the shackles of rite, ceremonial, sacred metres, etc. The poetical contests are for the composition of hymns, the errors which the victorious priest corrects are errors in sacrificial technique, the prosperity to which he helps is that obtained, nay compelled, from the gods by correctly regulated prayer {brahmci). Still, the poet who " fashioned " this hymn, builded better than he knew, and, if freed from extraneous, priestly matter, it remains an exquisite thing for all time. 2/2 VEDIC INDIA. Not SO another hymn (X., 125) consecrated to Vach, where the goddess is the Brahman ic abstrac- tion and nothing more, or that most characteristic passage where she undergoes the inevitable trans- formation into a cow. The poet is discontented. Maybe he is purohita to a prince who is not over lavish with sacrifices — which are expensive — and fees and gifts have been coming in scantily. He puts his plaint in the mouth of the goddess Vach, whom he presents as saying : " I, Vach, the skilled in speech, who assist all pious practices, — I, the divine cow who has come from the gods, — I am neglected by evil- minded man." 26. We will conclude our selection with a short poem (it can hardly be called a hymn) in praise of Aranyani, the goddess of forest solitude ( Waldein- samkeif), or rather — the personified Forest. Not that she is of much importance as a divine being ; indeed she appears to have been invented for the occasion by some poet-hermit whose soul was attuned to her mysterious charm. But it is a pretty thing ; and besides, it shows that forest life, which was to be- come so distinctive a feature of later Brahmanism, is — like almost everything that ever held a place in the spiritual life of Aryan India, — to be traced to the fountain-head of it, the Rig-Veda. We must imagine the thousand strange sounds and delusions which seem to encompass the solitary listener of an evening in the darkening forest : " I. Aranyani, Aranyani ! thou seemest to have lost thyself there ; why dost thou not ask the way to the village ? Does terror not seize LESSER AND LATER GODS. 273 thee? — 2. When the owl's shrill call is answered by the parrot, which hops about as though to cymbals' rhythm, then does Aranyani rejoice. — 3. Here, there is a sound as of browsing cows ; there, houses appear to be seen ; then there is a creaking at eventide, as though Aranyani were unloading carts. — 4. Here one man calls to his cow — there another fells a tree ; then one dwelling in the forest at night fancies that some one has screamed. — 5. Aranyani is not herself murderous, if no one else assails (a tiger, etc.) ; and after eating of sweet fruit, a man rests there at his pleasure. — 6. I sing the praise of Aranyani, the mother of wild beasts, the spicy, the fragrant, who yields abun- dance of food, though she has no hinds to till her." ^^ ^^SSS3=:23!SJ»Jb.j,M.,y 1 ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ifect; ^ 1 ^j ^P S S ^s ^Mi ! ^^& :si>^;i^^ ^S Pilp CHAPTER VIII. THE RIG-VEDA: EARLY HISTORY. 1. Everybody knows what is meant by Caste in India. Everybody has a more or less clear perception of the hold this baleful system has established on about one sixth of the human race, and of its well- nigh ineradicable evil effects, — of the insuperable barrier it opposes to the best-meant efforts of the country's European rulers. We are not here con- cerned with the modern development of the system ■ — the endless divisions and subdivisions resulting from intermarriages, originally forbidden, — which make official life in India so bewildering a task. But we must dwell awhile on the original division of the social body into four distinct, well- defined classes : (i) the Priests — Brahmans ; (2) the Warriors — KSHATRIYA or Rajanya ; (3) the Working class — Vaishya (farmers, craftsmen, and traders) ; — and (4) the Menial class — Shudra ; in other words : those who pray ; those who fight ; those who produce and barter ; and those who serve. 2. This is the division into which, more or less distinctly, every nation naturally splits itself at the 274 EARLY HISTORY. 2y$ very start of its organized existence. The peculiarity which characterizes it in India from very early times is that nowhere else were the distinctions so harshly set, the separating lines drawn so deep and straight ; nowhere else were men so sternly doomed to live and die within the pale of the social status into which they were born, with nothing left to individual choice, no narrowest door ajar through which to pass into another — wherein, in fact, lies the very essence of caste as distinguished from mere class barriers, which may be high and forbidding, but not utterly impassable. Lastly, nowhere else did the priesthood claim such absolute pre-eminence, demand such un- conditional submissiveness, such almost servile self- abasement from all other members of the community — to this extent that for a Brahman to marry a maiden of the warrior caste was a condescension or derogation, although to that caste belonged the kings and princes, the rulers of the land. What other priesthood ever had the hardihood to proclaim in so many words that " there are two classes of gods : the gods in heaven, and the Brahmans on earth " ? Let us see how the great Brahmanic code — the Laws of Manu — defines the duties and mutual relations of the four castes (L, 88-91) : " To Brahmans he [Brahma] assigned teaching and studying the Veda, sacrificing for their own benefit and for others, giving and accepting of ahus. " The Kshatriya he commanded to protect the people, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Veda, and to abstain from attacliing himself to sensual pleasures. " The Vaishya to tend cattle, to bestow gifts, to offer sacrifices, to study the Veda, to trade, to lend money, and to cultivate land. 2/6 VEDIC INDIA. " One occupation only the Lord prescribed to the Shudra : to serve meekly the other three castes." The position claimed for the Brahmans in this first, general definition, is comparatively modest, certainly not unreasonably arrogant ; but we turn a few pages and the lawgiver goes into details and makes his meaning clearer. "A Brahman," we read, "coming into existence, is born as the highest on earth, the lord of all created beings, for the protection of the treasury of the law. ' ' Whatever exists in the world is the property of the Erahman ; on account of the excellence of his origin, the Brahman is, indeed, en- titled to it all. "The Brahman eats but his own food, wears but his own apparel, bestows but his own in alms ; other mortals subsist through the benevolence of the Brahman. " , , . Know that a Brahman of ten years and a Kshatriya of a hundred years stand to each other in the relation of father and son ; but between those two the Brahman is the father. "... A Brahman, be he ignorant or learned, is a great divinity. . . ." " . . . Though Brahmans employ themselves in all sorts of mean occupations, they must be honored in every way ; for each of them is a very great deity. . . ." The whole duty of kings is pithily summed up under these three heads: " Not to turn back in battle; to protect the people ; to honor Brahmans." " To worship Brahmans " is the expression repeatedly used ; " to enrich them " is a point emphatically in- culcated, and the king is solemnly warned not to provoke them to anger under any circumstances, " for they, when angered, could instantly destroy him, together with his army and vehicles." Many are l8. — THE SIXTH AVATAR (OR VISHNU INCARNATE AS PAKASHU-KAMA, THE EXTERMINATOR OF THE KSHATRIYAS).' ' The COW is Vasishtha's sacred and miraculous cow, the emblem of Brahmanic prayer and sacrifice. 277 278 VEDIC INDIA. the worldly privileges and exemptions which they demand and enjoy. Still, it is very certain that the material power was in the hands of the warrior caste and that the Brahmans did not get quite as much in practice as they claimed in theory, and were per- fectly aware that conciliation was, after all, their wisest policy. Indeed, after some of the most out- rageous bragging and bullying, the priestly lawgiver suddenly descends to reasonable ground and lays down the following shrewd axiom, which, in all times and countries, has been the basis of the mutual understanding between Church and State : " Kshatriyas prosper not without Brahmans ; Brahmans prosper not without Kshatriyas. Brahmans and Kshatriyas, being closely united, prosper in this world and the next.' 3. It will have been noticed that only the three first castes are enjoined to study the Veda. , No mention of this duty is made among those of the fourth, the servile, caste. But this is not all. The Shudras were not only not expected, they were for- ' Post-vedic Brahmanism, however, retains a vivid memory of a bitter struggle for supremacy between the Brahman caste and that of the Kshatriyas. It is given in the form of a story both in the Mahabharata and the Puranas : The Kshatriyas had become so arrogant and oppressive that the interference of Vishnu himself was needed to repress them. The god took human form and was born in the family of the Bhrigu, a priestly race of divine descent, as Parashu-Rama (" Rama with the axe") who became the extermi- nator of the warrior caste. " Thrice seven times did he clear the earth of the Kshatriya race and filled five lakes witli their blood" — after which he ^ave the earth to the Brahmans ! EARLY HISTORY, 279 bidden, to share in the sacred inheritance of those whom to serve was their only mission. Their pres- ence at a sacrifice would have polluted it ; the sacred mantras were not to be sung or recited within hear- ing of a Shudra, and had a Brahman instructed one of the servile caste in the knowledge of the Veda, he would have been guilty of a wellnigh inexpiable offence. When a boy of one of the three higher castes attained a certain age, considered as "years of discretion," ' he was " initiated," i. e., admitted under solemn ceremonies into the religious community, after which he was placed under a ^"«rz/ or spiritual guide, invariably a Brahman, for instruction in the Veda. This initiation was regarded as the youth's second birth, his birth into the spiritual life, wherefore the three higher castes took pride in the appellation of " twice-born" {dvi-ja). From this distinction the Shudras, of course, were excluded. This is declared most explicitly in Manu's Code : " The Brahman, the Kshatriya, and the Vaishya castes are the twice-born ones, but the fourth, the Shudra, has no second birth. There is no fifth caste." 4. This brief survey of the original caste system has led us away from what is, properly speaking, our allotted subject, for we have strayed into post-vedic times. But the digression was necessary in order, precisely, to conclude it with the statement that castes, as a firmly established institution, were not ^ Any time between the eighth and sixteenth year for a Brahman, between the eleventh and twenty-second for a Kshatriya, and be- tween the twelfth and the twenty-fourth for a Vaishya. 28o VEDIC INDIA. as yet a feature of the Vedic period. Had they been, the fact must have transpired, even if indi- rectly, in the Rig-Veda, which faithfully reflects the state of society prevailing at the time that the col- lection was forming ; and this is not the case, except in one solitary and noteworthy instance : the ninetieth hymn of the tenth book (X., 90), known as the " Purusha-hymn," PURUSHA-SUKTA. The hymn, as a whole, is exceedingly obscure and of entirely mystical import. It describes the act of creation in the guise of a huge sacrifice performed by the gods, in which the central figure and victim is a primeval giant, a being named Purusha (one of the names for man), probably because mankind is represented as being produced by this being or, more correctly, out of various portions of his body. This is the only pas- sage of the hymn with which we are here concerned. Purusha, it is said, " is this whole universe, whatever has been and whatever shall be." Probably in a latent state, since the gods proceed to evolve out of him worlds and animals and men: " When the gods divided Purusha, into how many parts did they cut him up ? What was his mouth ? What his arms ? What his thighs and feet ? " The Brahman was his mouth ; the Rajanya was made his arms ; the Vaishya he was his thighs ; the Shudra sprang from his feet." Now the tenth book, as a whole, is of later date than the rest. It was made a sort of receptacle for odd hymns and such as, important in themselves, did not fit well into the scheme of the others, or were attributed to odd authors, while each book (except EARLY HISTORY. 28 1 the tenth and the first) usually bears the name of one priestly poet or family of poets. Intrinsic differ- ences in language, spirit, range of thought, etc., bear witness to the fact. The Purusha-Sukta especially comes under this head, and, by bringing the caste system as far back as the late Vedic period, shows how easy must have been the transition from that to the so-called Brahmanic or classical period, there never really having been a violent break between the two. The Brahmanic writings all endorse the Puru- sha myth, with the only difference that Brahma, the Creator and highest deity of the post-vedic creed, is substituted for the older name, and the mystic sacri- fice is not mentioned. This is why the Brahmans always boast of " the excellence of their origin," their interpretation of the legend being this : that those who came from the Deity's mouth, as the noblest organ, are born to teach and to command ; they embody his Mind, his Word ; those that came from his arms are born for action and defence ; those that come from his thighs have the mission of car- rying and supporting the nobler parts of the social body ; while humble service is clearly the lot of those lowly ones who proceed from the divine feet.' 5. Although the castes and their names occur but once in the course of the entire Rig-Veda, there is another distinction which recurs throughout the col- ^ Ludwig suggests that there is a hint at caste — or at least the in- cipient conception of caste — in tlie hymn to Ushas (Rig-Veda 1136), where it is said that the goddess ' ' arousing one to wield the royal power, another to follow after fame, another to the pursuit of wealth, another to perform services, awakes all creatures to go their different paths in life." (Seep. 222.) 282 VEDIC INDIA. lection, no matter to whom the different books are ascribed, and which divides the peoples who dwelt in the Penjab, and, later on, those who occupied the more easterly portion of Hindustan, into two main categories opposed to each other, each comprising numerous subdivisions, i. e., nations or tribes, man}' of whose names have been preserved by contempo- 19. — BRAHMANS OF BENGAL ( = ArYAS). rary bards: this division is that into Aryas and Dasyus. Who the former are we know well, and a natural association leads us to the conclusion that the latter are no other than the native — or non- Aryan — peoples whom the Aryan immigrants found in the land, and whom, after a long period of strug- gle, they reduced into more or less reluctant sub- EARLY HISTORY. 283 mission. There is no doubt but that we have here the first beginnings of caste, for this sweeping divi- sion is singularly like the modern one into " twice- born " and Shudra. Besides, the name for caste is even now varna, which means " color," and we shall presently see that the difference of color between the white conquerors and the dark-skinned natives is continually alluded to by the Vedic poets. Then, too, the word Dasyu, with the changes of meaning 20. — LOW-CASTE BENGALESE ( = DASYUS). it has undergone, tells an eloquent tale. It is an old Aryan word, and the Persians continued to use it in its original harmless sense of peoples, nations. In Dareios' historical rock inscriptions we find it so used, also in opposition to Aryas, to designate the populations of the provinces. In India it took a hostile shading — that of " enemies," whence it easily passed into the cloudland of Vedic mythology, with the meaning of "fiends," "evil demons," — the pow- 284 VEDIC INDIA. ers of darkness and drought — the "foes" whom Indra eternally combats and conquers with the help of the Maruts, the Angiras, and other beings of light. Logical and natural as the transition is, it adds very greatly to the difificulties of Vedic inter- pretation, because, when Indra or Agni are be- sought to drive away and annihilate the Dasyus, or are said to have destroyed the fastnesses of the Dasyus, it is frequently all but impossible to decide zvhich " enemies " are meant — the earthly or the mythical ones/ The last change which the word underwent is very significant : it ended by meaning simply " slave, servant," (slightly altered into ddsa), thus telling of conquest completed, and closely an- swering the more modern Shudra. We may, then, set down as correct the equation: Arya — Dasyu = "twice-born" — Shudra. And if any more proof be wanted of the fact that the servile class was made such by conquest, we have it in a passage of Manu's Code, which forbids the twice-born to associate with a Shudra " even though he ivere a king." What can a Shudra king be but a native sovereign ? 6. It were impossible to exaggerate the loathing and contempt with which the Aryas regarded those whom they were robbing of land and liberty. These feelings primarily aroused by that most ineradicable and unreasoning of human instincts, race antago- nism, find vent in numberless passages of great value, ' How easy and natural the step from "foe" to "fiend" we see from the very word " fiend," which originally meant both. The "arch-fiend" is the "arch-enemy" of mankind, — Erz-feiiid the Germans call him even yet. EARLY HISTORY. 285 because they enable us to piece together a tolerably correct picture of what those aborigines must have been, and in what manner they chiefly contrasted with their conquerors. The difference in color and cast of features is the first to strike us, and in that, as already hinted, we trace the beginnings of caste distinction. " Destroying the Dasyus, Indra pro- tected the Aryan color," gratefully proclaims one poet. " Indra," says another, " protected in battle the Aryan worshipper, he subdued the lawless for Manu, he conquered the black skinr " He [Indra] beat the Dasyus as is his wont ... he con- quered the land with his fair [or white] friends. . . ." Other names given by their Aryan conquerors are " goat-nosed " and " noseless " {anaso, evidently an exaggeration of " flat-nosed "), while the Aryan gods are praised for their beautiful noses. The Dasyus are accused of having no sacred fires, of worshipping mad gods, of eating raw meat, and, lastly, it would appear that they were held to be dangerous sorcerers : " Thou [Indra] hast made the Dasa's magic powerless against the Rishi." Needless to add that difference of language completed the barrier which the victors later strove to render impassable. 7. Although the opposition of Arya to Dasyu or Dasa, of " twice-born " to Shudra, is a perfectly established and intelligible fact, it were a mistake to see in " Dasyu " or " Shudra " the names of a par- ticular nation: they applied to all that were not Aryan, somewhat after the manner that, in classic antiquity, all went by the name of " Barbarians " who were not Greeks or Romans. It is suspected 286 VEDIC INDIA. that " Dasyu," in a slightly different form, iiiay have been originally the name of a people whom the Indo- Eranian Aryas encountered and fought in their wanderings before they entered the Penjab.' If so, the name early became a common one for " ene- mies," then " subjects," and its origin was thoroughly forgotten by both Eranians and Aryas of India. In point of fact, the fair-complexioned worshippers of Agni, Indra, and Soma found two widely different races in possession. These were undoubtedly broken up into numerous tribes, with different names and under different kings, — as, for that matter, were the Aryas themselves. The Rig-Veda teems with names which at first produce a bewildering impression of chaotic confusion ; but we shall see that the patient labors of a band of ingenious and untiring searchers have already succeeded in bringing some kind of order into this confusion, and evolving out of it something that may be called a twilight of history. This groping in a particularly obscure past, unguided by even the scantiest monumental evidence, is mate- rially aided by an observant study of the mixed ^ Nor were these " enemies " always and necessarily of non-Aryan stock. The Dahae (possibly the original " dasyus ") seem to have been " a tribe nearly akin to the Eranians," located " in the Kirghiz-Turk- man Steppe, which extends from the Caspian Sea beyond the Yaxartes (now Syr-Darya)." See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Altertktims,yo\. i., § 425, p. 525, and Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, vol. i., pp. 94-116. In this most important chapter it is also suggested to iden- tify the wealthy robber tribe of the Funis with the Parniajis, whom the Greek biographer Strabo describes as nomads — a sort of Eranian Bedouins — having their abodes along the Oxus (modern Amu-Darya), and that of the Pdrdvatas or " Mountaineers," a people whom the Vedic Aryas fought, with the Farouetai, dwelling in the mountains, also of " foreign" Aryan stock. {Ibid., pp. 97, 98.) EARLY HISTORY. 28/ population of India in our own times. " India," writes Mr. Hunter, he who, of living men, has the most thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the immense empire, " forms a great museum of races, in which we can study man from his lowest to his highest stages of culture. "A museum of races " indeed ; and no one could say so with better authority than the writer of the above lines, since he compiled and published a dic- tionary of the non-Aryan languages of India, which comprises ijg languages and dialects ! Of these but very few, of course, can lay any claim to literary worth ; yet the names of several, such as Tamil, Telugu, Kanarese, are familiar to philologists, and hold their well-defined place in the lists of important human speeches. They form two groups, represent- ing two distinct and widely different types or families of languages, answering to the two main stocks or races to which respectively belong the various non- Aryan peoples — the Dasyus of Vedic antiquity, the Shudra of classical Brahmanism, the " low-castes " of modern Hinduism. 8. These main stocks are the KOLARIANS and the Dravidians. Both came into the land at a pre- historic period far anterior to the Aryan invasion, from two opposite sides : the Kolarians from the east, or northeast, the Dravidians from the north- west — possibly through the very passes which later admitted the Aryan tide. If, as is probable, they found an older aboriginal population, no traces what- ever are left of that — unless some of the numerous sepulchral mounds be theirs, and of the rude monu- ments made of unhewn stofle and of upright slabs. 28S VEDIC INDIA. forming the combinations known in Western Europe by the Celtic names of "dolmens" and " menhirs," and circles and avenues, like those of Stonehenge in Eng- land, and Karnak in Brittany. Even these crudest forms of monumental art cover presumably several centuries, for, although they betray no attempt at •either writing or decoration, they represent two stages of culture, since in some only flint implements and the roughest of pottery are found, while others contain iron weapons, gold and copper ornaments. It is thought that the Kolarians came first, and after spreading over the regions now known as Assam and Bengal, encountered the Dravidian current, which was pushing on from the other end, somewhere in the Vindhya highlands, about the centre of the land, where they converged, — or rather collided, and crossed each other, the weaker Kolarians being broken up by the shock, and dispersing among the valleys and forests of this most intricate, though but moderately high mountain-ridge, while the more hardy, more vigorous Dravidians swept on and through the ridge, and flooded the South.' ' Mr. J. F. Hewitt, whose novel and extremely valuable papers on the " Early History of Northern India " {jfoiirn. of the Roy. Asiat. Society, tS88 and 1889) are freely used throughout this chapter, makes the following very explicit statement: "Wherever the three races have formed part of the now amalgamated population, the Kolarian tribes were the earliest settlers, as we always find them driven into the worst lands in districts wliere they live together with the other races. That they came from the East is shown by the following facts : First, they themselves always say that they did so ; secondly, the most powerful and purest Kolarian tribes are found in the East ; thirdly, their languages are allied to those used on the Brahmaputra and the Irawaddy by the Kambojans and the Assamese." 290 VEDIC INDIA. 9. The descendants of the two non-Aryan races are, even at the present day, easily distinguished by their different customs, traits of character, and re- ligions. The Kolarians are by far the gentler. As their chief representative tribe may be considered the Santals, who were a million strong in 1872 and who have their home among the hills abutting on the Ganges in Lower Bengal. They are among the more advanced of the pure-blooded non-Aryan tribes and have not adopted anything whatever from their conquerors' civilization. They have no castes or kings, but live in free village communities. Their religion amounts to little more than spirit and demon worship : besides the spirits of the forefathers — which the Kolarians, like the Dravidians, the Aryans, and all known races, worshipped originally from fear of their ghosts — there are those that dwell in each mountain, forest, river, well ; there is the race-god, the clan-god, and the god or spirit of each family. These tutelary spirits are supposed to dwell in large, ancient trees. This is why — for the modern Hindus have incorporated into their Brahmanic creed this native superstition along with many less harmless ones — there is in or just outside almost every vil- lage some gigantic tree which is at once temple, shrine, and meeting-place, often, too, the only host- elry for pedestrians to rest in ; the vast circle of shade which such a tree casts around thus becomes the centre of village life ; it even does duty as a mart or fair ground, where peddlers and itinerant venders of cakes, fruit, etc., dispose their booths and stands, jugglers, and snake-charmers exhibit their EARLY HISTORY. 291 tricks. Sacrifices are offered to the resident spirits — of cakes, honey, milk, if the people are Hindus, of small animals and fowls if they belong to other races, — and the branches flutter gaily with the ornaments and ex-votos hung upon them. If such a tree, as is 22. — SANTAL TYPES. often the case, happens to be a banyan, with its myste- rious, self-planted avenues, and its tiers of leafy gal- leries, it becomes a suburb in itself, and the effect, to a foreigner's eyes, is indescribably picturesque and original. These solitary, sacred trees appear to be a survival of the very ancient practice observed by 292 VEDIC INDIA. the Kolarians when they first began to clear the forests which barred their way — that of leaving a portion of it untouched and sacred to the forest spirits.* 10. Of the Dravidian race, tribes are scattered through the central Vindhya region, while its bulk has, from pre-Aryan times to this day, covered the entire three-sided table-land sweepingly named Dek- han. In moral characteristics they, from the first, strongly contrasted with the Kolarians. They too live in village communities, but under a rule which leans more to the monarchic type, and, in all their ways, they show more public spirit. Equally good traders and farmers, they are patient, laborious, stead- fast, and loyal — the material out of which the Eng- lish trained some of those Sepoy Regiments which stood by Clive and Hastings through untold hard- ships and dangers, and some of which — far more ad- mirable still — did not waver in their loyalty through the late rebellion. Unfortunately, their religion is of a most barbarous character, and has exercised a baneful influence on that of the Aryan and semi- Aryan population, which professes the medley of Vedism, Brahmanism, and native gross superstitions, now known as Hinduism. They share the Kolarians' belief in spirits and goblins, and their priests are conjurers versed in all the practices and tricks of ' That the Kolarians were the first to clear the forests and till the land, Mr. Hewitt is very positive ; he even thinks that, although they learned the use of iron very early, and cut the trees with iron weap- ons, the great number of stone axes or celts found in various localities makes it probable that they did some clearing work with stone im- plements before they found out the use of iron. EARL V HISTOR Y. 293 Shamanism. But this is a subordinate part of their religion. The most essential feature of it is thewor- ship of the Earth, in the form of both god and god- dess, as the giver and maintainer of life, and the adoration of the Snake as- the Earth-god's special emblem. The Snake-god or King of Snakes is the wise and gigantic serpent Shesh — a name which casts a singularly vivid side-light on one of the many puzzles with which the Rig-Veda still teems. In several of those passages in which the priestly poets exhaust their ingenuity inventing abusive epithets for their Dasyu foes, they call them, with scathing con- tempt, Shishna-devas, literally : " whose God is Shishna or Shesh." The inference suggests itself almost irresistibly, and, moreover, leads us to suspect that many a passage wherein serpents and dragon- monsters are mentioned, may have a more direct and realistic meaning than was hitherto supposed. Thus, with regard to the ever-recurring battle between In- dra and Ahi, " the Serpent," invariably ending with the Aryan champion-god's victory, we cannot help asking ourselves : have we really always to do with a nature-myth ? is that battle only an incident of the atmospheric drama, and is the Serpent always and inevitably a Cloud-Serpent ? By the light of later ethnological studies, another and even simpler in- terpretation lies temptingly near : may not the ser- pent sometimes personate the Serpent-god of the Snake-worshippers — the Shishna-devas — and the bat- tle between the Aryan champion-god and the Dasyu sacred emblem thus resolve itself into a poetical version of the long race-strife ? It is certain, at all 294 VEDIC INDIA. events, that, in the enthusiasm and novelty of recent discovery, mythical interpretation has been greatly overdone, and, just as the word " Dasyu," which was at first declared to designate only the demons (of darkness, drought, or winter) whom the bright dcvas fought, is proved to apply quite as often to earthly, human foes ; so the cloud-serpent of the uncompro- mising myth-theory may very well turn out to be, quite frequently, an allegorical presentation of the object of those foes' superstitious adoration. We are often brought down to earth from Cloudland with as unceremonious a shock. II. Be that as it may, it is certain that snake-wor- ship, utterly un-Aryan as it is, made a profound im- pression on the white invaders, so much so that, in the course of time, an Aryan snake-god — Ariaka — was invented ; an impression plainly discernible, too, in the prominent place given to the Nagas (snakes and, snake-people, half-human, half serpentine in form and possessed of supernatural wisdom) in the later classical poetry. They play an important part, too, in modern Hinduism, which has instituted a yearly festival in honor, not of mythical serpents, but of the real, live snakes, which do not ap- pear to strike this apathetic people with a loathing and terror at all proportionate to the havoc they play with human life (see p. 40). This festival, which comes round towards the end of July, is of a decidedly propitiatory character. Pilgrims flock to the Naga-shrines which abound in certain districts ; the cities teem with snake-charmers, whose weird charges eagerly crawl around the pans with milk 295 23. — FESTIVAL OF SERPENTS. 296 VEDIC INDIA. placed at intervals on the ground in all the principal thoroughfares, before the admiring eyes of a devout and festive throng/ 12. Repulsive and uncanny as this, to us unnatu- ral, worship appears, it is, on the whole, harmless, and we might dismiss it with a shrug. Not so the crowning feature of the Dravidian religion — human sacrifices, which have been in constant and universal use among all the tribes of this ancient race until put a stop to by the English quite lately — in the case of the Kandhs and GoNDHS, two representa- tive and advanced Dravidian tribes, not till 1835. Human victims — either bought or kidnapped — were offered to the Earth-god regularly twice a year, at seed-time and harvest-time, and on special occasions, when some public need or calamity appeared to call for conciliation or atonement. Nothing can be more averse to the Aryan spirit than such sacrifices, at least at the stage of moral development at which we be- come acquainted with the race ; yet such is the influ- ence of long contact and habit, that we find even this horrible practice adopted by modern Hinduism in one of its two principal sects (Shivaism). The pure Brahmanism of the post-vedic and classical periods was not guilty of any such compromise, and such was the horror with which these aborigines in- ^ It is worthy of notice : ist, that temples dedicated to serpents are not found in the North of India ; 2d, that the priests of such tem- ples are never Brahmans, but belong to the lower castes. Indeed, the old Aryan spirit is so much alive still in the noble castes, that they hold the serpent to be of evil omen and a Brahman, if he happens to see one in the morning, will give up for that day whatever work or errand he may have on hand. EARLY HISTORY, 297 spired the Aryan Hindus, that their always exuberant fancy transformed them into a race of cannibal giants, 24, — GONDH TYPES, fiends, and wizards, possessed of supernatural pow- ers and every evil art that magic can lend, even to that of flying through space and assuming any 298 VEDIC INDIA. form at will — thus transferring to them the attrib- utes of the old Vedic cloud-demons whose place they took in the classical mythology of the race. These Rakshasas, whose horrible aspect and mur- derous wickedness make them the counterpart — or possibly the prototype — of our nurseries' Ogre, are described as taking especial delight in defiling sac- rifices, disturbing the devotions of pious forest her- mits, or leading them into unseemly temptations, carrying ofT pure and holy maidens, and opposing, by force or wile, the advance of the fire-worshipping, Soma-pressing " friends of the Devas." The Rama- yana is full of their evil prowesses ; indeed the Rakshasas clearly stand out as the main obstacle encountered by Rama in his campaign against Cey- lon, which embodies in heroic and epic guise the Aryan invasion of the South,' although it was in reality neither so rapid, nor quite so successful as the national poem would lead us to think. It was not so much an invasion as an advance, and we can easily imagine that it must have been an achievement of no small difficulty for a body of men necessarily very inferior in numbers, in the face of a compact population, brave, stubborn, and strongly organized. Such the Dravidians are now, Avhen they number over twenty-eight millions south of the Vindhya, and there is not the slightest reason to doubt that such, in the main, they were at the early time of their long patriotic struggle. ' See Frontispiece — the Rakshasa king of Lanka, Ravana, with ten heads and ten pair of arms, each wielding ia different weapon, defending his island at the head of his hosts of black giants. EARL V HIS TOR Y. 299 13. We are often told to look on the non-Aryan peoples of modern India if we would picture to our- selves those whom the Aryan immigrants had to deal with from the moment they set foot in the land of the Seven Rivers. " Many of the aboriginal tribes," writes Mr. Hunter, " remain in the same early stage of human progress as that ascribed to them by the Vedic poets more than 3000 years ago." The instances of which he proceeds to give a list show conclusively that, in this wonderful country, the human race presents as great a variety as the animal and vegetable worlds, and covers the entire range of possible development, from pole to pole, of highest culture and spirituality, reached ages ago by some of its denizens, down to the lowest depths in which degraded humanity can drag itself and be human still. We seem to listen to the gro- tesque fancies of a dream — wild even for a dream — when we are told of people who live, or at least huddle together for shelter, in kennel-huts, six feet by eight, wear no clothing but bunches of leaves fastened to a string of beads that encircles the waist, and use flint weapons, not having even words for any metals in their language, thus affording us a startling glimpse of the Stone Age, a survival not even of the highest type of that age's civilization. Yet such a tribe, under the graphic name of " Leaf- wearers," actually exists, in the hilly districts of Orissa, not very far from Calcutta ; it was ten thou- sand strong in 1872, and though a considerable por- tion were persuaded by the English authorities to adopt some kind of clothing and given the neces- 306 VEDIC INDIA. sary cotton material, it is reported that many have since returned to their foHage costume. Not much higher rank certain broken tribes who live in the mountains south of Madras, with no fixed dwel- lings of any sort, wandering about in the wildest recesses, only resting or seeking temporary shelter under little improvised leaf-sheds — existing on jungle products, mice, and other such small animals as they can catch, — and worshipping wicked demons, so that the question which naturally occurred to them when 24. — ANCIENT TYPE OF DWELLINGS DISCOVERED IN THE HIMALAYAS, AMONG NON-ARYAN TRIBES. missionaries told them of a great and all-powerful God was : " And what if that Mighty One should eat us?" Some hill-tribes of Assam are described as " fierce, black, undersized, and ill-fed." Until very lately they lived on their more peaceable and industrious neighbors of the plains — in what man- ner can be gathered from the names of two such clans, which, translated, mean respectively, " The Eaters of a Thousand Hearths " and " The Thieves who Lurk in the Cotton-field." EARL V HISTORY. 301 14. Doubtless, such were some — many, of the ab- origines, or Dasyus, whom the Aryan immigrants found in possession, and whom they drove before them or reduced to subjection, certainly with no gentle hand. But it were a great and fatal mistake — fatal to sound historical criticism — were we to imagine that the entire population of the land stood on this lowest level of barbarism. It is to be feared that this error was, at one time, only too generally entertained ; but it could proceed only from a super- 25. — ANCIENT TYPE OF DWELLINGS DISCOVERED IN THE HIMALAYAS, AMONG NON-ARYAN TRIBES. ficial study of the Rig-Veda, or from insufficient means of research on a field so very lately opened : or — and it is probable that this was a frequent and fruitful source of error — from too blind a con- fidence in certain theories which, indeed, had an ample foundation of truth, so that the fault lay not so much in them as in the exaggerated enthusiasm which accepted them too unconditionally, to the ex- clusion of other elements. Comparative Mythology 302 ■ VEDIC INDIA. is a new science even now. Its first discoveries, some forty years ago, coupled with those of its twin- science. Comparative Philology, were so startling that they dazzled its votaries. The Sun-and-Dawn Myth and the Storm Myth, ubiquitously identical, were a revelation, the ** Opeyi Sesame " to a long list of puzzles, in which problems of race, language, re- ligion, poetry, had been heretofore tangled into a very jungle of mostly unanswerable questions, which, however, pleasantly untwined at the touch of the new talisman — the key, as was believed, to every lock. A band of brilliant scholars took hold of the Rig-Veda and subjected it, hymn after hymn, verse by verse, to the mythological system of interpreta- tion which it had first suggested and splendidly justi- fied, and under their deft, ingenious fingers there grew a world of gods and demons, a world that was not of earth and in which humanity had no part, save in the persons of priests and worshippers. By a sleight-of-hand, of which the trick became very easy to catch, every king or hero became an impersona- tion of the Sun or the Thunderer, every maiden was the Dawn, every enemy a fiend of Darkness or Drought, and in this manner all the proper names, with which the Rig-Veda bristles, were accounted for mythically, without leaving a loophole for History to put in a timid claim. A closer, more dispassionate study, conducted by a later, more cool-headed gen- eration of scholars — cool, because not elated with the fever of the discoverer, the pioneer — revealed that many of the hymns were invaluable historical documents, commemorating real events, and per- EARLY HISTORY. 303 petuating the names of the leading actors therein. And it becomes patent that probably a majority of the common names, which were sweepingly set down as names of fiends and other supernatural agents, really are those of tribes, peoples, and men, while many an alleged atmospheric battle turns out to have been an honest, sturdy hand-to-hand conflict between bona-fide human, mortal champions. 15. It is a thousand pities that the Rig-Veda does not contain history in the direct narrative or epic form, but only in that indirect and fragmentary form which is known as " internal evidence." The reason is that the book represents, not a simple and primi- tive stage of culture, as has been, somewhat rashly, taken for granted for a number of years, but, on the contrary, an advanced and complex one, which had developed some essential social institutions, such as royalty, aristocracy, and priesthood, in clean-cut, strongly set frames, on the background of an already long and eventful national past. The consequence is that the hymns which we may designate as in a specially direct sense " historical " ones, are full of allusions to occurrences which every one is supposed to know about, of names familiar to all. And where the occurrences and the names do belong exclusively to the world of Myth, that also was too well and too generally understood to require explanation. Thus it comes to pass that the kernel of historical fact for which we seek is, to us late-comers, unaided as we are by any thinnest thread of memory or tradition, imbedded in an almost impenetrable thickness of hardest outer shells and prickliest burrs. Yet 304 VEDIC INDIAN enough very essential facts have already been elicited by close and minute study, to form an inter- esting and on the whole not unreliable general pre- sentation of the Aryan advance from their first quarters in the Penjab eastward to that vast region watered by the historical Ganges and Djumna, which became the centre and headquarters of the race when the Vedic era had glided by and merged into the Brahmanic period. i6. Scant as we think the material which the Rig- Veda supplies for a reconstruction of an age too remote to be called epic, let alone historical, the re- sults obtained are yet important enough to justify an epitome of them even in a popular work so neces- sarily limited in scope and space as the present. A few broad strokes of the brush will sketch an outline which will keep filling itself in with every added de- tail or scrap of internal evidence, from the moment the point of view and the perspective are properl] established — and it is these which will have to be. shifted considerably from the originally accepted, long maintained lines, producing, on the whole, an entirely different picture, and one which, while it opens out a vista into a remoter past than was here- tofore credited to our knowledge of India, presents some (if we may so express it) startlingly modern features ; only another way of reasserting what has been found out by philosophizing students of our race so many ages ago as to have become a truism, namely that " history repeats itself," and that " there is nothing new under the sun." 17, Thirty-five years ago no one would have EARLY HISTORY. 305 thought of connecting India (pre-Aryan India), with archaic Babylonia, and if a sohtary fact pointing that way was once in a while picked out by an excep- tionally inquisitive and observant mind, it was suf- fered to remain unexplained, as a sort of natural curiosity, for the inferences it suggested were too startling to be more than hinted at. Eminently such a mind was the late Francois Lenormant, and he laid great stress on the use of the word mand as early as the Rig- Veda, to denote a definite quantity of gold ' — a word which can be traced to ancient Chaldea, or Semitic Babylonia, with the same mean- ing, and which afterwards passed into the Greek monetary system {mnd, still later latinized into mind). Well, this little fact simply points to a well established commercial intercourse between Dravidian India (for the Kolarians never came as far west as the land by the Indian Ocean) and Babylonia or Chaldea. And now, years after, chance brings two more discoveries, individually as trifling ; yet, linked together, the three form a chain of evidence as complete as it is strong. In the ruins of Mugheir, ancient Ur of the Chaldees, built by Ur-Ea (or Ur- Bagash) the first king of united Babylonia, who ruled not less than 3000 years B.C., was found a piece of Indian teak. * This evidence is exceptionally con- clusive because, as it happens, this particular tree is to be located with more than ordinary accuracy : it grows in Southern India (Dekhan) where it advances ' Rig-Veda viii., 67 (or 78), 2 : " Oh bring us jewels, cattle, horses, and a mand of gold" ^ Sayce, Hibbei't Lectures for 1887, PP> ^2> ^3^> ^37* 3o6 VEDIC INDIA. close to the Malabar coast, and nowhere else ; there is none north of the Vindhya. Then again, the precious vocabularies and lists of all kinds of things and names which those precise old Babylonians were so fond of making out and which have given us so many startling surprises, come to the fore with a bit of very choice information, namely that the old Babylonian name for muslin was sindhu, i. e. that the stuff was simply called by the name of the coun- try which exported it. 1 8. This is very strong corroborative evidence of several important facts, viz . that the Aryan settlers of Northern India had already begun, at an amazingly early period, to excel in the manufacture of the delicate tissue which has ever been and is to this day — doubtless in incomparably greater perfection — one of their industrial glories, a fact which implies culti- vation of the cotton plant or tree, probably in Vedic times already* ; — that their Dravidian contemporaries were enterprising traders ; that the relations be- tween the two races were by no means of an exclu- sively hostile and warlike nature. For, if the name sindhu proves the stuff to have been an Aryan pro- duct, it was certainly not Aryan export trade which * It is well known that our name for the fine and dainty fabric called "muslin " {mousseline) is derived from that of the city on the Tigris, Mosul, which, throughout the Middle Ages and to the present day, has been famous for its fabrication. How long before — who can tell? An imaginative and inquisitive mind might wonder whether, if all the links could be recovered and joined together, this particu- lar industry might not be traceable to those almost prehistoric commercial relations between Dravidian India and Chaldean Baby- lonia. Did the latter learn the art from India and import the cotton from there — and did the Assyrians carry it north along with other arts ? A stupendous issue to hang on so frail a thing ! EARLY HISTORY. 307 supplied the foreign markets with it, for there was no such trade, the Aryas of Penjab not being acquainted with the sea, or the construction of sea-going ships. It is clear that the weaving of fine stuffs must have been an Aryan home-industry ; that Dravidian trad- ers — probably itinerant merchants or peddlers — col- lected the surplus left over from home consumption, certainly in the way of barter, the goods then finding their way to some commercial centre on the western coast, where the large vessels lay which carried on the regular export and import trade. All this internal evidence is still further strengthened by another item of information which, though coming from a very different quarter, dovetails into it exactly. Professor Max Miiller has long ago shown that the names of certain rare articles which King Solomon's trading ships brought him, were not originally Hebrew.' These articles are sandal-wood (indigenous on the Malabar coast and nowhere else), ivory, apes and peacocks, and their native names, which could easily be traced through the Hebrew corruptions, have all along been set down as Sanskrit, being common words of that language. But now, quite lately, an eminent Dravidian scholar and specialist brings proof that they are really Dravidian words, introduced into Sanskrit.'^ This is a dazzling ray of light, and proof so conclusive, when added to an already strong and compact case, that further corroborative evidence would be welcome, but scarcely necessary.^ ' Science of Language, First Series, pp. 203, 204 (1862). " Dr. Caldwell, Introduction to his Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian Languages. ^ Compare the sculptures on Shalmaneser's Black Obelisk, Story of Assyria^ pp. 185-195. 308 VEDIC INDIA. 19. The late Greek historian Arrian mentions a maritime city, Patala, as the only place of note in the delta of the Indus. This city, very probably the port from which the muslin went forth, and which is identified with modern Hyderabad, is renowned in legend and epos as the capital of a king of the Snake race — i. e., a Dravidian king — who ruled a large part of the surrounding country. This native dynasty is closely connected with the mythical traditions of the two races, through its founder. King Vasuki — a name which at once recalls the great Serpent Vasuki, who played so important, if passive, a part on a mem- orable mythic occasion (see p. 187). The connection between the Dravidians of Northern and Western India and the first Babylonian Empire, — the Baby- lonia of the Shumiro-Accads, before the advent of the Semites' — becomes less surprising when we realize that there was between them something more than chance relations, that they were in fact of the same race or stock — that which is broadly designated as Turanian. Philology points that way, for the Dravidian languages are agglutinative ; craniology will not disprove the affinity, for a glance at the Gondh types on illustration No. 23, and the turbaned head of Tell-Loh (Accadian Sirgulla) will show the likeness in features and shape.'^ But even more con- vincing is the common sacred symbol — the Serpent, the emblem of the worship of Earth, with its mystery, its wealth and its forces. The Accadian supreme god Ea was worshipped at his holiest shrine at ' See Story of Chaldea, ch. iii., " Turanian Chaldea," and ch. iv. ^ Ibid., p. 214. EARLY HISTORY. 309 Eridhu under the form of a Serpent, and as Eridhu was the centre from which the first Chaldean civihza- 26. — HEAD OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN. FROM TELL-LOH (SIRGULLA.) SARZEC COLLECTION. (ABOUT 4OOO B.C.) 27. — SAME, PROFILE VIEW. tion started and spread, so the serpent-symbol was accepted as that of the race and its religion.' The ^ See Stoiy of Chaldea, pp. 215, 246, 287. 3IO VEDIC INDIA. Turanian Proto-Medes also, before they were con- quered by the Aryan followers of Zarathushtra/ worshipped the snake-symbol of Earth, which after- wards was identified by the Eranian Mazdayasnians with Angramainyush, the Evil One, the Spirit of Lie and Death. This Proto-Median Serpent, like his Dravidian brother, had the honor of being ad- mitted into the Aryan Mythic Epos. The snake- king (originally snake-god) AjI-Dahak (" the Biting Serpent ") figures in the mythical legends embodied in the Eranian ShaH-Nameh (" Book of Kings ") as the wicked Turanian king Afrasiab, whose shoulders were kissed by the Evil One, when there sprouted from them two living snakes, who had to be fed daily on human brains — a pretty close equivalent of the Dravidian human sacrifices, — until the in- vincible Eranian hero, as in duty bound, delivered the world from the threefold monster.'' But the most remarkable bequest left to classical Aryan India by the intimacy between her pre-Aryan in- habitants and their Chaldean race-brethren, is the legend of the Deluge, in which the part of Hasi- sadra and the Biblical Noah is given to the Aryan sage and progenitor of the present human race, Manu. The story has no roots in Aryan myth, ^ See Story of Media ^ etc., pp. 144, 267, 268. ^ The Shah-Nameh is the Eranian national epic. It was written, in the eleventh century, by the poet Firdausi, at the suggestion of his patron, the great Sultan Mahmud of Gazna. It purports to be the history of Persia from the earliest times down to that monarch's reign, but is really, at least the first half of it, a complete collection of the hero-myths of the Eranian race, embodying the glorious memories of the life-long struggle between Eran and Turan. EARL Y HIS TOR Y. 3 1 1 in which it stands alone, unconnected with any of its legends, being evidently torn out of its own native cycle of the Izdubar poems. It would form too long a digression in the middle of a chapter; we will therefore do it justice best by reserving a sep- arate appendix for it.* 20. There is one fundamental axiom which should be firmly kept in sight from the outset, as, by so doing, much confusion and wrong theorizing will be avoided. It is that a people zvho speaks a certain lan- guage does not necessarily belong to the race which originated that language. This proposition, when applied to individuals, will appear self-evident. But in dealing with whole communities, national or tribal, especially in more or less remote antiquity, it has for a time been strangely overlooked. There prevailed a general tendency to forget that a com- munity, as well as an individual, may acquire a foreign language from a variety of reasons. It may do so from choice (retaining its own the while), for friendly purposes of trade and political intercourse ; or from necessity, if not compulsion, on being reduced to subjection by an alien conquering race. Concilia- tion follows on conquest ; intermarriage completes the work of amalgamation ; mixed races are the result ; the language at first imposed as a stamp of bondage remains as a pledge of amity; frequently, if the invading race is intellectually the higher, to the exclusion of the original, native tongue. But a language does not mean merely a bundle of words and names ; it means a subtle, all-pervading influence, 1 See pp. 335/". 312 VEDIC INDIA. and the race that adopts, no matter from what motives, another race's language, ends by absorbing also what that language carries with and in itself : the spirit, the soul which that race breathed into it, as embodied in its religion, forms of worship, social institutions, popular poetry, and ethics. These things, when once they have gained a hold, spread and propagate by all manner of channels, and thus it may come to pass that a people will speak a language, follow a religion, practise forms of life, originally not their own. It is therefore utterly un- scientific to say, for instance, " such and such a people speaks an Aryan language ; consequently it is of Aryan stock " ; for ethnology, with its attendant sciences, physiology and craniology, may positively demonstrate that it is no such thing ; at all events our decision must wait on their verdict. Without being scientific, the Aryas of India knew this well : it is expressly inculcated in their standard code, the Laws of Manu, that " all those tribes in this world " which do not belong to the three twice-born castes are Dasyus, wJietJicr they speak the language of the Mlekkhas (Barbarians) or that of the Aryas (X., 45). The only warranted conclusion in such a case would be that the said people had at some time been sub- jected to a powerful, transforming Aryan influence ; as to the people of Aryan race who were the bearers of that influence, they may, or may not, have passed away from the land or region to which they left the most enduring part of themselves — their spirit. 21. This hypothetical case represents a reality which confronts us all through history, in all times EA RL V HIS TOR Y. 3 1 3 and parts of the world. But it is comparatively rare for a morally victorious race to vanish from a land, whose population its influence affected so deeply and so lastingly, without leaving any traces of its physical presence. At this late age of the world, when intercourse and amalgamation have shaken most of the barriers between race and race, and pulled down so many, mixed races are the rule, the mixture running through innumerable grades and shadings ; and, in proportion as one or another stock predominates in a given fraction of humanity, the spiritual characteristics belonging to it assert them- selves. This is precisely what we see in modern India. The whole of the huge continent is permeated with Aryan influences. To the Aryan race it owes its name, its culture in the main, its distinctive national language and literature. Yet what lack of uniformity ! Side by side with the Sanskrit dialects are spoken about 150 non-Aryan languages and dialects ; the variety in physical types and features is as great, ranging from the noble Aryan to the low Negroid ; the official national religion, Brahmanism, encloses in its fold several powerful sects which are manifestly growths of widely different spiritual soils; and no wonder, when, of the 200,000,000 which make the Indian Empire (not including the Feudatory Provinces), the census of 1872 showed only 16,000- 000 of Brahmans and Rajputs (corresponding to the Kshatriyas, originally called Rajanyas), — " the comparatively pure offspring of the Aryan or Sans- krit-speaking Race " ^ ; while 11,000,000 represented * W. W . Hunter, The Indian Empire, etc. 314 VEDIC INDIA. " the great Mixed Population, known as the Hindus, which has grown out of the Aryan and non-Aryan elements, chiefly from the latter"; the rest being the recognized non- Aryan tribes or Aborigines. 22. It will be a surprise to many that the Aryan population of the Indian continent should be so out of all proportion small when compared to the de- scendants and representatives of those races which the Aryan immigrants found in possession. The same difference must have existed on a still greater scale in those earliest times — and would alone sufifice to stamp as irrational the theory of Aryan supremacy having been established by sheer conquest and force. Of course there was fighting, and raiding, and driving of native tribes into mountain fastnesses, while others were reduced to a state of bondage. But this would account for only a very small portion of the Aryas' success ; for the laws of overwhelming numerical odds can be defied only within certain limits, even by the bravest. But it has ever been one of our race's chief and truest claims to glory, that it has asserted, extended, and maintained its superiority far more by moral means than by physical force. Three agencies were, beyond doubt, mainly active and successful in propagating Aryan intellectual in- fluence and, as a consequence, Aryan material rule : commercial intercourse, foreign diplomacy helped by an innate spirit of adventure, and missionary work. Intermarriages, of course, did the rest. 23. It has always been a characteristic custom among Aryan nations for their warriors to work off their exuberant energies by going forth in search of EARLY HISTORY. 315 adventures abroad, frequently in the form of robbing raids or piratical expeditions, but quite as often by taking military service with neighboring, or even remoter, states or sovereigns, singly or in bands. Opportunities of the kind must have been plentiful with the Aryan youth of the Seven Rivers, sur- rounded as they were with numerous tribes, with whom war must have been a habitual occupation. This naturally paved the way for political alliances, and there were those at home who were not slow to decide that such was the surest, and in the end quick- est way to extend and establish Aryan influence. These were the spiritual leaders of the people, the priestly class which was in time to develop and crystallize into the Brahman caste. In the Rig-Veda we find these most influential persons belonging to the families of hereditary poets and bards — Rishis — whose names are handed down as the composers of the sacred hymns. Seven of the books in the collec- tion are attributed each to one of these Rishis, who are shown by many allusions and direct assertions in the text to have been attached to the royal families of different tribes, where they occupied the position not only oi purohitas or family priests and national bards, but evidently also that of royal advisers and ministers ■ — a custom which meets us as a fully developed and sacred institution all through the later Brahmanic period. But it turns out, on closer inspection, that these royal houses and the tribes they rule, are by no means always Aryan, and it is startling, at first, with our still lingering prejudices, to find an Aryan priest glorying in the position of bard and piirohita to a 3l6 VEDTC INDIA. Dasyu — /, e. native^king and people. Yet we have to get familiar with the fact, which opens out a whole vista of missionary work, conversions, priestly ambition — and sound national policy. 24. Every one who has lived in India knows — and the English learned it to their cost at the time of the great mutiny — what almost unlimited influence the wandering home-missionaries have over the popula- tion. When such z. guru (spiritual instructor) makes his rounds, the people of the villages which he honors with a visit pour out to meet him and carry him to their homes under demonstrations of respect almost amounting to worship. Within historical, even modern times, such men have been known to rise to the highest positions at the courts of native potentates, as prime ministers or as unofBcial, but all the more powerful, private advisers of the master. Such must have been the Aryan missionaries of the Vedic times, who carried the worship of Agni and Soma into the lands of the Serpent together with Aryan speech and customs. The process of conver- sion must have been a simple matter enough. A ceremony of initiation, significantly named " a second birth," — a simple confession of faith — and the impure brood of the Serpent was transformed into the " twice-born " child of the bright Devas and admitted into the Aryan spiritual community, the Aryan po- litical confederacy. Now there is in the Rig-Veda a short verse which, under the name of Gayatri, is to this day considered the most sacred of all texts, en- dowed with miraculous powers, and has, through over a score and a half of centuries, been repeated 28. — RECEPTION OF A GURU OR SPIRITUAL INSTRUCTOR. .CI7 3l8 VEDIC INDIA. thrice a day at least, with fervent faith, by number- less millions of human beings. It reads as follows in the translation : ' ' Of Savitar, the heavenly, that longed for glory may we win, and may himself inspire our prayers." — (HI., 62, 10.) This text at first sight appears so insignificant as to make the exceeding holiness attached to it some- thing of a puzzle. Our perplexity however vanishes if we assume it to have been the confession of faith demanded of converts — as this would fully account for its sacredness, which endures unimpaired to this day. We can have no proof that this mantra was used for this particular purpose, but there is nothing to make it improbable. Its briefness and simplicity make it appropriate ; it is comprehensive too, as the sky-and-sun-worship, a form and development of fire-worship, might well be taken as the symbol of the bright Aryan nature-religion in opposition to the mystic and gloomy earth-worship represented by its weird emblem, the Serpent. This supposition is still further and very greatly favored by the circum- stance that the Gayatri is found in the collection attributed to the Rishi Vishvamitra. And here we come on the thin end of a wedge which, being inserted at this early time, sprung a cleft which runs through the entire epic and religious hfe of India : the schism between the two Brahmanic schools which have their names from the two — probably real — Vedic Rishis Vasishtha and Vishvamitra. 25. To keep strictly within the information sup- plied by the Rig-Veda itself — Vasishtha was the EARL V HISTOR Y. 3 19 bard of the Tritsu, the leading and purest Aryan tribe, and Vishvamitra was the bard of the Bhara- TAS, their great enemies and one of the most power- ful native tribes. He at one time had been with the Tritsu, and for whatever cause he left them — not improbably personal revenge — he played a conspicu- ous part in the confederacy which attempted to check the Aryan advance and increasing power. There is a hymn (53), in Book III., that of the Vish- vamitra family, which evidently alludes to this very thing. In the first part of the hymn it is said that when Vishvamitra conducted King Sudas' sacrifices, Indra was gracious to him for the Rishi's sake, and a great blessing is pronounced on the king, and his war-steed and the expedition on which he starts. Then, quite suddenly, Vishvamitra is made to declare, in his own person, that his prayers protect the tribes of the Bharatas, and the hymn ends with four verses of imprecations against enemies who are not named, but whom tradition so positively identified with Vasishtha and his family, that the priests of this house in later times never uttered these four verses, and tried not to hear them when spoken by other Brahmans. It is most probable that the Vishvami- tras resented some distinction conferred upon the Vasishthas, possibly their appointment as purohitas to the Tritsu royal family, and went over to their most powerful enemies, the Purus and Bharatas. The Tritsu and their allies were victorious in the ensuing struggle, known as " the War of the Ten Kings," and both the bards have left descriptions of it and of the final battle on the banks of the Purushni, 320 VEDIC INDIA. in some spirited hymns, the most undoubtedly his- torical of the collection. At a later period the fol- lowers of Vasishtha and his descendants represent the narrowly orthodox Brahmanic school, with its petty punctiliousness in the matter of forms, rites, obser- vances, its intolerance of everything un-Aryan, its rigid separatism. This school it was which stood guard through all these ages, and up to our day, the champion — and possibly originally the institutor, of Caste ; who advanced and upheld all the exaggerated claims of the Brahman priesthood, to divinity, to the rule of the world, and ownership of all it holds, to supernatural compelling powers over nature and the gods themselves through sacrifice and ascetic prac- tices, and the like. The followers of Vishvamitra and his descendants, on the other hand, represented the school of liberalism and progress, of conciliation and amalgamation ; it was probably through their efforts chiefly that Aryan speech and worship and, as a consequence, Aryan supremacy, spread among the native princes and their tribes. But it must also have been owing to this their policy of conciliation that many of the beliefs and practices of the once loathed aborigines gradually crept into Aryan wor- ship, and gained a footing there, paving the way for the mixed forms of Hinduism in the future. Their orthodox antagonists blamed and despised them for this laxity, wherein they saw a danger which they strove to avert by redoubled zeal in keeping high and strong the bulwark of Caste ; and while they could not deny the holiness and authority of one who ranks with their own Rishi in the Rig-Veda EARLY HISTORY. 321 itself, they found a vent for their hatred and spite in the assertion that Vishvamitra was not originally a Brahman but a Kshatriya, and had obtained the highest rank only by superhuman feats of asceti- cism which compelled the gods to grant him the con- secration he desired. The feud between the two bards and their respective descendants is a favorite theme in later Brahmanic literature, where it is invested, both in poetical and theological writings, with the usual exuberance af fancy and extravagance of detail and incident. We find nothing of the kind in the Rig-Veda, where the beginning of the differ- ence is not narrated at all, and only shows from the context of the so-called historical hymns. Very sig- nificant, in the light of these, is the line in which Vishvamitra praises his adopted tribe, the Bhara- tas, calling them " far-sighted people," — probably in opposition to his former patrons, the orthodox and narrow-minded Tritsu. All this shows us the institution of the castes in a novel and most natural, convincing light : as a reaction, on the part of the strictly orthodox worshippers of Agni and Soma, against the alarmingly broad and levelling tendencies of the missionary work done by some enthusiastic preachers who combined religious zeal with far-see- ing diplomacy. High Church against Low Church. The native converts, received at first on equal terms, began at a later period — probably that of the early Brahmanas — to be admitted only on condition that they should occupy a subordinate position — whence the Shudra caste. It will be noticed, how- ever, that both systems — the orthodox and the 322 VEDic mniA. liberal, help to carry out what Mr. Hewitt calls "the great Brahman conception of a number of subor- dinate tribes ruled by a very small Aryan minority." 26. The host of proper names in the Rig-Veda must have plunged the first who made them a special study into a state of chaotic bewilderment bordering on desperation. Where was the clue, where the saving thread in this labyrinth ? What names were those — of gods, of demons, of men, of nations, of places? This first sorting, with due margin for correcting mistakes, was a gigantic task. And when at last the names of nations and tribes were set apart with tolerable certainty, there still remained the appar- ently hopeless difficulty of locating them, geographi- cally and ethnologically. Everything that could help in the work was brought together: every indication supplied by internal evidence, by the patient collation of passages, by a minute study of the great epics, by gleaning every crumb of informa- tion, however fragmentary, however corrupt, scat- tered in foreign writings, whether of Greek or Arab. All these rays, some of them very pale and uncertain, gave, when concentrated, a search-light strong enough to dispel the thickest of the gloom that lay on that vast and ancient field, and afford revealing glimpses of most suggestive landmarks. If we trace certain names right through the Rig- Veda, simply writing down each line, or verse, in which they occur, we will be astonished at the amount of information which will result from this mechanical proceeding; and if we repeat it with several names, the feeling of confusion will soon wear away, and make room for a EARL V HIS TOR V. 323 delightful, increasing sense of order and clearness. Whole leading groups stand out, and of some royal houses we obtain in this way genealogies or dynasties covering several generations — yielding, by the way, additional evidence, if such were needed, of the slow growth of the Rig-Veda in its finished form. Two of these dynasties run parallel from father to son, and are closely connected throughout. They are the royal houses of the Tritsu, whose />uro/iita or chaplain was the orthodox Vasishtha, and that of the PURU, their friends and allies. The glory of each of these houses appears to have culminated in a tribal hero : the Tritsu DivODASA, and KUTSA the Puru, or Purukutsa. These two peoples, to- gether with three others, the Yadu, the TURVASU, and the Anu, are frequently mentioned collectively in the Rig-Veda as " The Five Tribes " or *' Five Races." 27. The Tritsu are beyond doubt the chief Aryan nation of early Vedic times — perhaps the original invaders of the Penjab. If peaceful methods were used, it was not by this tribe ; their conquest was all by war, and though they had alliances among the Dasyu nations, many of the latter gradually turned against them and at last formed a confederacy with the object of stopping their too rapid advance east- ward, as they took possession of one river after another. Their first great king, Divodasa, was engaged in a continuous warfare with some fierce mountain tribes of the north, ruled by a chieftain of the name of Shambara, who appears to have con- structed a quantity of forts in defence of the many 324 VEDIC INDIA. passes which lead from the highlands into the steeper and wilder Himalayan fastnesses. These forts, of course, were built of wood, so that the usual mode of attack and destruction in these petty cam- paigns was by fire. ' This is why, in the numerous passages in which these exploits of Divodasa are glorified, both by Vasishtha, the bard of his family, and others, Agni often shared with Indra the credit of the victory. For some reason these forts are always spoken of as being ninety or ninety-nine — probably a way of saying " a great many." ** O Lightning-bearer," the poet exclaims in one place, " these are thy deeds that thou destroyedst nine- and-ninety castles in one day, and the hundredst at night." — The Tritsu must have had their hands, very full, for, while continually busy in the north, they were fighting a great deal in the southeast ; sometimes they pressed onwards, sometimes only held their own against native tribes who strove to prevent their crossing now one river, now another. On the whole they were successful, and victories are recorded, both of Divodasa and his son — or grandson — SUDAS, over various nations, especially the Yadu and Turvasu, tv/in tribes always named together, who appear to have lived south of the Seven Rivers, between the Indus and the Yamuna. Yet these two tribes were mostly of Aryan stock, and nearly con- nected with the Aryas of the Indus and Sarasvati. To make up for this, the Purus, a powerful, orig- inally Dravidian race, who lived in the West and had a standing feud with the horse-breeding Gand- HARAS of the Kabul valley, were for a long time the EARLY HISTORY. 325 Tritsu's firm allies. Indra and Agni are said to pro- tect both and help them in their wars against their common enemies. In one of the Vasishtha hymns to Agni we read : '' From fear of thee the black people fled ; they dispersed, leaving behind their goods and chattels, when thou, Agni, blazing for the Puru, didst destroy their forts." (VII., 6, 3.) And in another hymn of the same book (VII., 19), Indra is praised for giving the Tritsu the victory over the Yadu- Turvasu, for helping Kutsa, the Puru king, in his battles, and giving his enemy into his hand. This friendship must have lasted after Divodasa's death, for one hymn of another book (I., 63. 7), mentions jointly the victories of Purukutsa, as he is often named, and Sudas, Divodasa's successor: "Thou, Indra, didst destroy the seven forts, fighting for Purukutsa, O Lord of Lightning ; thou didst throw them down, like straw, before Sudas, and help the Puru out of their straits." True, some scholars give a slightly different reading of this passage, which reverses the sense, thus : " Thou didst throw down Sudas like straw," and make out Kutsa to have gained a victory over, not with, Sudas. Should this reading, which has on its side Roth's and Ludwig's weighty authority, be confirmed, it will only go to show that the great general war, known as " the War of the Ten Kings," from the number of the tribes which formed the confederacy at whose head Purukutsa undoubtedly stood, was preceded by private hostilities between the latter and. his former allies, the Tritsu. If so, it might be that the tem- porary advantage obtained by the Puru prince 326 VEDIC INDIA. encouraged the other malcontents to declare them- selves and form a confederacy, — some, like the Yadu-Turvasu, from the hope of avenging former injuries, others in self-defence, to check the too rapid advance of that most enterprising of Aryan tribes. The philological point may never be positively settled one way or the other ; but the doubt, as will be seen, does not materially affect the general course of things, which is all that really matters to us, students of history. There are a great many similar debatable cases, and it is wise not to make too much of them — unless one is a specialist. 28. The War of the Ten Kings is told in the col- lections that bear the names of both hostile bards — the Vishvamitras and the Vasishthas, and the story of the campaign and the decisive battle can be easily reconstructed out of the detached passages and whole hymns which allude to the subject or nar- rate the chief incidents of the struggle. The Va- sishtha hymns are usually addressed to Indra, by later bards, who beseech him to help their people " as he once helped Sudas and the Tritsu," and it is expressly mentioned in them, as well as in those of the rival house, that the name of Indra and also of Va- runa was invoked on both sides — they were, in fact, entreated to " defeat the foes, wJictJier Aryan or Ddsay This is quite a common invocation, and oc- curs repeatedly in several books, showing, on one hand, that those early conflicts already were in a measure internecine ones, between rival Aryan tribes, on the other that the Aryan gods were already EARLY HISTORY. 327 adopted by many native nations.' So the Anu, originally probably of Kolarian stock, are especially mentioned as worshippers of Agni, and we have seen the help given by Indra to the Puru repeatedly men- tioned. Nor should it be forgotten that ancient nations were by no means exclusive in their theology, and were quite ready, without in the least betraying their allegiance to their own gods, to do honor, inci- dentally, to a strange god who had made good his claim to respect by the success and prosperity with which he rewarded his worshippers. Now Indra had become so pre-eminently the ever victorious war-god, that he could very well be praised, and even invoked, by warlike tribes not of Aryan stock or religion, 29. The names of both the enemies and the allies of the Tritsu and their king Sudas have been pre- served for us by the bards of the Rig- Veda. The confederacy, consisting of ten powerful tribes, was headed by the Puru under their hero the great ^ " He whom both battle lines call upon in the fray, both adversa- ries on this side and on that, — he whom they invoke, standing on chariots, — that, O men, is Indra." (II., 12, 8.) " . . . The warriors who leagued together against us, whether kindred or strange, break their might." (VI., 25, 3.) " Thou, O Indra, dost strike both foes, the Aryan and the Dasyu." (VI., 33, 3.) " They (Indra and Agni) strike the foes, both Aryan and Dasa." (VI., 60, 6.) " Whatever contemners of the gods, be they Dasa, be they Arya, O glorious Indra, do battle against us, give us an easy victory over them, thy foes." (X., 38, 3.) " Thou (Agni) didst take the goods of mount and plain, and didst strike the foes, both Aryas and Dasyus." (X., 69, 6.) Etc., etc. 328 VEDIC INDIA. Kutsa, and by the Bharatas who, already converted by Vishvamitra, were to become so thoroughly Aryan- ized, and to take such a prominent position that, in after days, " the Land of the Bharatas " was to be- come a synonym for " Aryan India," The names of several other famous chieftains are mentioned as having perished in the decisive battle. Neither were the Tritsu unprovided with allies, and in the array of the latter we are startled to find two very familiar names — those of the Parthians and the Per- sians — Prithu and Parsu, though there is really nothing so very wonderful in the fact that chips of the two chief Eranian tribes should have, like others, wandered south of the Himalaya. A people named ViSHANiN, i. e. " followers of Vishnu," is also men- tioned, almost certainly Aryan sun-worshippers, showing that Vishnuism as a distinctive worship — a sect — had its roots in a remoter past than was hith- erto suspected.' As though to complete the connec- tion, we find in the list of the Tritsu's allies, the Vishanin bracketed with the Shiva, which is thought to be a name of the TuGRA, one of the oldest abo- riginal Dravidian peoples, whom the Aryas had specially nicknamed " Sons of the Serpent," and who, under the religious designation of Shiva, were very probably the originators of the worship of Shiva under the form or with the attribute of a snake." ' Vishnuism is probably originally connected with the transition from the oldest calendar of thirteen lunar months to the reformed solar year of twelve months, presided over by the twelve Adityas. — See Mr. Hewitt's Early History of Northern India. * lb., ii., pp. 232, 233 (y. Roy. As. Soc, xxi., new series). In the Russian epic cycle there is an evil champion demigod, the constant EARL Y HISTOR V. 329 That all these peoples had even then already become much mixed, partly with Aryan elements, is more than likely. At all events it takes one's breath away to find the three component elements of modern Hinduism : Brahmanism, Vishnuism, Shivaism, ar- rayed before us in the Rig- Veda in precisely the same juxtaposition : Tritsu, Vishanin, Shiva ! 30. The confederacy had planned the campaign well and was sure of success. Nor does the Tritsu bard underrate the danger, but plainly states that Sudas "was surrounded " and cried' out for help to Indra, who cut a way for him through the enemies, in consideration of the prayers sent up by his friends, the white-robed Vasishtha priests. The confede- rates' plan was simply to surprise the Tritsu, whose settlement had advanced as far as the Sarasvati, while they themselves were drawn up in battle array on the northern side of the Purushni (modern Ravi).' The two hosts, therefore, were separated by two in- tervening rivers — the Vipash (modern Bias) and the Shatadru or Shutudri (modern Sutlej). These the confederates intended to cross, as we are very ex- plicitly informed by a hymn of the Vishvamitra collection. As this historical document is also one of the few faultless poetical gems in the Rig-Veda, we shall try to give an idea of it, as far as a meagre prose version can do so. It is most finished in form, and — a rare merit in these old songs — consistent enemy of the heroes or bogaiyrs, who goes by the name of " Tugarin the Serpent." Our folk-lorists have been greatly puzzled to account for the name and where it came from : might the key be found here ? * Mr. Hewitt draws attention to this river's name as suggestive of the Purus' original home having been on its banks. 330 VEDIC INDIA. throughout, without an anticlimax or a digression. The form is that of a dialogue between the Rishi and the rivers, arranged in couplets of two verses each, the one being spoken by the poet, while in the other the rivers reply ; the introduction is in the narrative form. " I. Down from the mountains, in merry race, like two mares let loose, or two comely mother-kine at play, Vipash and Shatadru run along, carrying their milk-like waters. " 2. Spurred on by Indra, like swift charioteers, ye hasten to the mighty mass of waters ; with swelling waves ye beautiful ones run close to one another. " 3. I went down to the most motherly of streams, to Vipash, the wide, the fair, — to the two that, like a pair of mother-kine fondling their calves, wander along to meet in one broad bosom. "4. 'Swelling with sweet waters, travelling along towards the god-created bosom, nought can stem our swifc current : what is the wish of the bard, that he calls to us rivers ? ' "5. Hark to my devout song, and stay your course for a brief rest, ye holy ones ; to you rivers calls my heart's loud prayer ; with longing I call out to you — I, the son of Kushika. "6. ' He whose arm bears the lightning, Indra, broke the way for us, killing Vritra, who shut in the waters ; the beauteous Savitar, the god, guides us on ; following his lead, we spread our waters wide.' "7. This heroic deed be praised for evermore, that Indra did when he cut the Serpent in pieces. With his lightning he struck the rob- bers ; the waters sped away whither they longed to go. " 8. ' Forget never, O bard, this word of thine ; let the latest gen- erations hearken to it ; give us a loving word in thy songs, O poet, let us not be forgotten of men, and honor shall be paid to thee.' " 9. Hear then, sisters, what the poet says : I came to you from far with loaded wagons. Now bend ye low, give me an easy ford ; let not your waves touch my axle-tree, O Rivers. 332 VEDIC INDIA, " lo. ' We will heed thy word, O Rishi, that cam'st to us from far with loaded wagons ; I bend low before thee as a willing slave, as to her lord submits the bride.' " II. But when the Bharatas' host, animated by Indra and full of ardor, has quickly forded thee, then let the current shoot up again with arrow's fleetness ; this is the boon I beg of you, ye holy ones. " 12. The Bharatas, filled with the ardor of battle, have crossed ; the bard did win the rivers' favor. Now swell, now grow rapidly, to end the work, and hasten onwards, with well-filled beds." (III., 33.) 31. The bard in this last verse, with truly poetic licence, describes as an accomplished fact that which he only wished to happen, but which did not really happen. For in reality, the event was exactly re- versed : the Tritsu took the initiative and it was they who crossed the Vipash and Shatadru (the fording of which Indra made easy to Sudas), astonishing the enemy by appearing unexpectedly, in battle array, on the southern bank of the Purushni. Then there was a veritable scramble ; one after another the confed- erate tribes with their leaders jumped into the river, "thinking, fools that they were, to cross as easily as on dry land." The horses and the chariots were badly handled by the current, and those who did cross, came out on the other side like stampeding cattle without a herdsman. Many chiefs were drowned ; the slaughter was terrible: over six thousand warriors fell "by Indra's might"; the booty "given into Sudas' hands " was immense, and the survivors had to pay heavy tribute. The Tritsu victory was com- plete, and there was nothing to hinder their further advance eastward to the Yamuna (Rig- Veda, VII., 18). The fate of the Puru hero Kutsa is not ex- EARLY HISTORY. 333 pressly mentioned, but there is a curious incidental allusion which would almost make us believe that he was taken prisoner. In that one verse Kutsa's tribu- lations are obscurely hinted at, and the birth of Trasadasyu, son of his daughter PuRUKUTsi, seems to be considered as a consolation or compensa- tion sent him by the gods. 32. Trasadasyu became a very powerful sovereign, the first of Indian princes to bear the highest royal title, " king of kings " {saviraj). A solid peace must have followed the disastrous battle on the Purushni, for Trasadasyu invariably appears as the Aryas' firm friend and ally ; his successors, through several gen- erations, are frequently mentioned, not only in the great epics, but in the Rig-Veda itself. But his people gradually changed its name, and became known as the Kurus, who take such a prominent position in the country as depicted in the great epics. This change of the name is explained, as usual, by a genealogical fiction : Kuru, we are told, was a great- grandson of Kutsa, and was so great a king that his entire people was thenceforth named after him. In the same manner the Tritsu disappear ; but we are expressly told that they continued to acquire lands and the Yamuna is — rather abruptly — mentioned in connection with them. But if their name disap- pears, that of the Vasishthas and their bigoted or- thodox school does not, and it turns out, from this and other indications, that the land which the Tritsu finally occupied, became that stronghold of fanatical Brahmanism, caste, and absolute priestly rule, which is designated in the most perfect of Brahmanic 334 VEDIC INDIA. codes, that of Manu, as the Brahma-VARTA, the only country in which it is lawful for a really ortho- dox Brahman to reside. This is the text : "That land, created by the gods, which lies between the two divine rivers, Sarasvati and Drishadvati, the sages call Brahmavarta. " The custom handed down in regular succession among the castes and the mixed races of that country is called the conduct of virtuous men. " Fro7n a Brahman born hi that country let all men on earth learn their several usages. " This as distinguished from the entire country be- tween the Himalaya and the Vindhya and between the eastern and western oceans, which is called Aryavarta, and is good to live in, but not pre- eminently holy as that small chosen tract. The twice-born should strive not to live outside of Arya- varta, for the rest of the continent is the country of the Mlekkhas (barbarians) where it is lawful for the Shudra to reside, but which the twice-born should avoid. EARLY HISTORY. 335 APPENDIX TO CHAPTER VIII. THE STORY OF THE FLOOD IN INDIA (THE MATSYA AVATAR).' I. The story of the Flood exists in Hindu litera- ture in several versions, always as an incident of some more or less bulky work or collection, except one, which forms the subject of a short separate narrative or Purana — the Matsya {i. e. " Fish ") Pu- RANA. It is also given in very abridged form in another of the lesser Puranas, the Agni-Purana ; but the two fullest and most elaborate versions are those in the Bhagavata Purana, one of the most important of these writings, consecrated to the glorification of Vishnu, and in the great epic itself, the Mahabharata, where it occurs among many legends told on various occasions by this or that learned Brahman, for the entertainment or instruc- tion of this or that royal hero. These versions have been known to Sanskrit scholars for half a century and more, but being found imbedded in such a late, and in some cases almost modern body of litera- ture, representing Hinduism even more than classi- cal Brahmanism, those who had detected the foreign ring of the story were naturally led to attribute it to late Semitic importation, directly connecting it with the Biblical account in Genesis. The surprise was therefore great when a version came to light in one of the great Brahmanas, the Shatapatha (" Brah- ' In connection with these pages it is absolutely necessary to read over carefully Chapter YII. of the Siorjy of Chaldea, more especially the incident of the Deluge, pp. 314-317. 336 VEDIC INDIA. mana of A Hundred Paths "), suddenly removing the legend into an age closely bordering on the Vedic, in which we find it presented, in a monument of distinctly Vedic literature, as an ancient legend accounting for the origin of the present human race. The point of view was shifted at once in a way which necessitated entirely new adaptations, and some peculiar details in the later versions, which will be seen mutually to complete one another, only now won their proper recognition and interpretation. 2. Professor Max Miiller published the first trans- lation of the then newly discovered Shatapatha ver- sion.' We here give the latest and most authorita- tive one, edited and indorsed by the same veteran scholar'' : " I. In the morning they brought to Manu water for washing, just as now also they are wont to bring water for washing the hands. When he was washing himself, a fish came into his hands. "2. It spake to him the words : ' Rear me ; I will save thee.' — ' Wherefrom wilt thou save me ? ' — ' A flood will carry away all these creatures ; from that I will save thee.' — ' How am I to rear thee ?' "3. It said : ' As long as we are small, there is great destruction for us : fish devours fish. Thou wilt first keep me in a jar. When I outgrow that, thou wilt dig a pit and keep me in it. When I out- grow that, thou wilt take me down to the sea, for then .1 shall be beyond destruction.' "4. It soon became a large fish. Thereupon it said: ' /« such and such a year that flood will come. Thou shalt then attend to me and prepare a ship, and when the flood has risen thou shalt enter into the ship and I will save thee from it.' " 5. After he had reared it in this way, he took it down to the sea. ^ History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 425 ff. (1859). * In the Shatapatha Brahmana, translated by Julius Eggeling ; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xii., 1882. EARL Y HIS TOR V. 337 And in the same year which the fish had indicated to him, he at- tended to his advice by preparing a ship ; and when the flood had risen, he entered into the ship. The fish then swam up to him, and to its horn he tied the rope of the ship, and by tliat means he passed swiftly up to yonder northern mountain (Himalaya). "6. It then said : ' I have saved thee. Fasten the ship to a tree, but let not the water cut thee off whilst thou art on the mountain. As the water subsides, thou mayest gradually descend.' Accordingly he gradually descended, and hence that slope of the northern moun- tain is called ' Manu's descent.' The flood then swept away all these creatures and Manu alone remained here. "7. Being desirous of offspring, he engaged in worshipping and in austerities. . . ." Manu offered much milk-curds and clarified but- ter {^ghee), and in the course of a year, lo ! his accumulated prayers and sacrifices took a visible body and stood before him in the shape of a beauti- ful woman, the divine Ida. He lived with her as his wife, and they became the progenitors of a new race — "this race of Manu," as the Aryan Hindus call themselves. 3. This oldest and simplest version presents only the most general outlines of the familiar story, and if it stood alone it would not warrant any very defi- nite conclusions. We are not even told who the fish was, and can only conjecture that it was a divine being or a heavenly messenger. The version of the Mahabharata comes next in point of time, it is far more complete, and contains some suggestive particulars. To begin with, we are not left in doubt as to the person of the hero, who is introduced with his usual patronymic, which shows him to be the brother of Yama, as known to us from other sources. 338 VEDIC INDIA. " There was a great Rishi, Manu, son of Vivasvat . . . (who, through a great many years, gave himself up to the practice of the most fervid religious austerities. . . .). " Once a fish came to him on the banks of the Chirini, and spake : ' Lord, I am a small fish ; I dread the stronger ones, and from them you must save me. For the strong fish devour the weaker ; this has been immemorially ordained as our means of subsistence. Deliver me from this flood of apprehension, and I will requite the deed.' " Hearing this, Manu, filled with compassion, took the fish in his hand, and threw him into a jar bright as a moonbeam. In it the fish, being excellently well tended, grew ; for Manu treated him like a son. After a long time, he became very large and could not be contained in the jar. Then, seeing Manu, he said again : ' In order that I may thrive, remove me elsewhere.' " Manu then took him out of the jar, brought him to a large pond, and threw him in. There he continued to grow for very many years. Although the pond was two yojanas long and one broad, the lotus- eyed fish found in it no room to move ; and again said to Manu : ' Take me to Ganga, the dear queen of the ocean-monarch ; in her I shall dwell.' "Manu accordingly took the fish and threw him into the river Ganga. There he waxed for some time, when he again said to Manu : ' From my great bulk I cannot move in the Ganga ; be gracious and remove me quickly to the ocean.' Manu took him out of the Ganga and cast him into the sea. "When he had been thrown into the ocean, he said to Manu: ' Great lord, thou hast in every way preserved me : now hear from me what thou must do when the time arrives. Soon shall all these terrestrial objects, both moving and fixed, be dissolved. The titne for the purification of the %vorlds has now arrived. I therefore in- form thee what is for thy greatest good. " ' The period dreadful for the universe, moving and fixed, has come. Make for thyself a strong ship, with a cable attached ; em- bark in it with the seven Rishis and stow in it, carefully preserved and assorted, all the seeds which have been described of old by Brah- mans. When embarked in the ship, look out for me : I shall come recognizable by my horn. So shalt thou do. I greet thee and de- part. These great waters cannot be crossed over without me. Distrust not my word.' — Manu replied: 'I shall do as thou hast said.' £A RL V HIS TOR V. 3 3C) "After taking mutual leave, they departed each on his own way. Manu then, as enjoined, taking with him the seeds, floated on the billowy ocean in the beautiful ship. He then thought on the fish, which, knowing his desire, arrived with all speed, distinguished by a horn. When Manu saw the horned leviathan, lofty as a mountain, he fastened the ship's cable to the horn. Being thus attached, the fish dragged the ship with great rapidity, transporting it across the briny ocean, which seemed to dance with its waves and thunder with its waters. Tossed by the tempests, the ship whirled like a reeling and intoxicated woman. Neither the earth, nor the quarters of the world appeared ; there was nothing but air, water, and sky. " In the world thus confounded, the seven Rishis, Manu and the fish were beheld. So, for very many years, the fish, unwearied, drew the ship over the waters, and brought it at length to the highest peak of Himavat. He then, smiling gently, said to the Rishis : ' Bind the ship without delay to this peak.' They did so accord- ingly. And that highest peak of Himavat is still known by the name of Naubandhana (' the Binding of the Ship '). " The friendly fish then said to the Rishis: ' I am the Prajapati Brahma, than whom nothing higher can be reached. In the form of a fish I have delivered you from this great danger. Manu shall create all living beings — gods, asuras, men, with all worlds and all things, moving and fixed. By my favor and through severe austere fervor, he shall attain perfect insight into his creative work and shall not become bewildered.' " Having thus spoken, the fish in an instant disappeared. Manu, desirous to call creatures into existence, performed a great act of austere fervor, and then began visibly to create all living things. . . . " In this version (not to dwell on its amplification and remarkable literary perfection), three important features are added, which all greatly enhance its in- trinsic connection with the Chaldean and Biblical original: ist. The Flood is said to be sent because the time has arrived for the purification of the world — or for its punishment, as it amounts to the same 340 VEDIC INDIA. thing ' ; 2d, Manu is not saved alone, but is allowed to take a few human beings (not his friends or family, but the seven holy sages of Hindu legend) and '' the seeds " '^ ; 3d, the mysterious fish reveals himself to Manu and his companions as Brahma the One Supreme Deity, and speaks to them and bids Manu repeople the world ^ ; only, with the bombas- tic exaggeration which has grown on the race since the time of the comparatively sober Veda, he does not limit his command to earth and the human race, but orders him to create^ besides men, gods, and asuras, and all the worlds. 4. This exuberant imaginative element is still more developed in the version given in the Matsya (or Fish) Purana, one important feature of which is Chaldean Deluge Tablet, * . . . The God Ea spoke to me his servant : ' ' Men have re- belled against me, and I will do judgment against them . . . the heavens will rain destruction . . . the appointed time has come. ^ . . . I brought together and stowed into the ship . . . the seed of life of every kind, my family, my men servants and my women servants , . . and also my nearest friends. . . . ^ (Hasisadra is not given any mission or task, but simply trans- lated with his wife into immortal life.) See Slo)y of Chaldea, pp. 314-317. Genesis VII. -IX. . . . And God looked upon the earth, and behold, it was cor- rupt. . , . And God said unto Noah ... I do bring a flood of water upon the earth, . . . and everything that is in the earth shall die. . . . . . . Thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee. And of every living thing of all flesh . . . shalt thou bring in the ark ... to keep them alive. And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and re- plenish the earth. EARLY HIS TOR Y. 34 1 that the divine preserver is revealed not as Brahma, but Vishnu, a change which could have taken place only after the schism which divided Brahmanism into several sects. One of these had adopted the rather insignificant solar god of the Rig-Veda and invested him with supremacy, as the ever watchful preserver and savior of all creation. The Matsya Purana introduces Manu as "a heroic king," the patient son of the Sun, who had attained so high a degree of holiness that he abdicated in favor of his son (name not given), in order to de- vote himself wholly to ascetic practices, which he kept up with intense fervor during a million years (!) " in a certain region of Malaya " (Malabar). Once, as Manu was offering an oblation to the Pitris in his hermitage, a small fish fell on his hands along with some water. Then follows the incident we are already familiar with : the fish is successively trans- ferred into a jar, into a large pitcher, into a well, into a lake, into the Ganges, and lastly is thrown into the ocean. " When he filled the entire ocean, Manu said, in terror: 'Thou art some god, or thou art Vasudeva. ' How can any one else be like this? Reverence be to thee, lord of the world.' Thus addressed, the divine Janardana, ' in the form of a fish, replied : ' Thou hast well spoken and hast rightly known me. In a short time the earth, with its mountains, groves, and forests, shall be submerged in the waters. This ship has been constructed by the company of all the gods for the preservation of the vast host of living creatures. Em- barking in it all living creatures, both those engendered from moist- ure and from eggs, as well as the viviparous, and plants, preserve them from calamity. "When, driven by the blasts at the end of the yuga, the ship is swept along, thou shalt bind it to this horn of mine. ' Two of Vishnu's " thousand names." 342 VEDIC INDIA. Then, at the close of the dissolution, thou shalt be the Prajapati (' lord of creatures,' in this case 'creator') of this world, fixed and moving." By " all living things " are certainly meant speci- mens of each kind, as no ship could have been imagined large enough to contain all individual living things existing, just as "plants" undoubtedly also signifies specimens, or rather the seeds of plants. As for human beings, only one holy Rishi is named by Vishnu as Manu's companion. On being ques- tioned more closely, the god explains that the great deluge will be preceded by a universal con- flagration which, following on a hundred years of drought and famine, shall consume the world so the earth shall become as ashes and the sether itself shall be scorched with heat. Even the gods and the planets shall be destroyed. Of the former only Brahma is to be preserved, of the latter the sun and moon. The Vedas also are to be saved in the ship. An important point on which the story of the Matsya Purana differs from the Chaldean original is that the great cataclysm is not sent in punishment, but occurs as the ending of one yuga or age of the world, ushering in the beginning of another, every such change of period, in the Brahmanic belief, being marked by the destruction and resurrection of the universe. The narrative ends rather abruptly : " When the time announced by Vasudeva had arrived, the deluge took place in that very manner. Then the god appeared in the shape of a horned fish ; the serpent Ananta^ came to Manu in the shape of a rope. . . . He then attached the ship to the fish's horn by the serpent rope, as he stood upon the ship. 5. This same absence of moral point distinguishes ' Ananta — " the Endless" ; the symbol of eternity. EARLY HISTORY. 343 the elaborate and dramatic relation in the Bhagavata Purana.' There also occurs at the end of one of the great ages " an occasional dissolution of the universe," during which the world is submerged in the ocean. But another and, if possible, greater disaster befalls gods and men : the Vedas are stolen and carried away by " the strong Hayagriva," a demon of the race of the giant Daityas, who are forever warring against the gods and marring their good works, and it is on discovering this deed that Vishnu takes the form of a fish. The human hero of the deluge -incident is not Manu, but " a certain great royal Rishi," called Satyavrata, the righteous King of Dravida, a devoted worshipper of Vishnu, given to the usual austere practices, and who, in the then following new era, is born again as Manu, son of Vivasvat. " Once, as in the river Kritamala^a river of the country of Dravida, or Malabar), he was offering the oblation of water to the Pitris, a fish came with the water in the hollow of his hands." Here follows the request for protection, the transfer of the growing fish from one receptacle to another, and the recognition of him by Manu as the disguised god Vishnu. To the enquiry why he had assumed this disguise, the god replies : " On the seventh day after this the three worlds shall sink beneath the ocean of the dissolution.* When the universe is dissolved in that ' Bhagavata — " the Blessed One " ; one of the most sacred names of Vishnu. This Purana is specially devoted to the glorification of the god and his various incarnations or Avatars. * Compare Genesis vii., 4 : " For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth . . . and every living substance that I have made will I destroy. ... 10. And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood zvere upon the earth. . . ." 344 VEDIC INDIA. ocean, a large ship, sent by me, shall come to thee. Taking with thee the plants and various seeds, surrounded by the seven Rishis, and attended by all existences, thou shalt embark on the great ship and shalt, without alarm, move over the dark ocean. When the ship shall be vehemently shaken by the tempestuous wind, fasten it by the great serpent to my horn, for I shall be near." Everything happens as predicted, and when " the dissolution " is over, Vishnu slays Hayagriva and recovers the Veda, while " King Satyavrata, master of all knowledge, sacred and profane, became, by favor of Vishnu, the son of Vivasvat, the Manu of this era." This is the so-called Matsya-AvatAr, or Fish- Incarnation of Vishnu — one of ten disguises assumed on different critical occasions by the Preserver, to save the world from some great danger, and one of which is yet to come, at the end of the present j//^^, or era. The Agni-Purana's story, though somewhat more concisely told, is so exactly the same, with no detail added or altered, as not to require quotation. 6. The great French Sanskritist, Eugene Burnouf, who edited and translated the Bhagavata-Purana, was familiar with all these versions, excepting only the oldest, that of the Shatapatha-Brahmana, which was not known in his time as yet, and he is very positive about the kernel of the story having been imported from Babylon. His only mistake lies in assigning this importation to late historical times, while there is so much, both in the subject-matter and in sundry particulars, that points to an infinitely earlier intercourse, in pre-Aryan times, between the kindred people of Dravidian India and archaic or 'i ,' / ., /, ^v ''^•l.. THE MATSYA-AVATAR, OR FIRST INCARNATION OF VISHNU IN THE FORM OF A FISH TO RECOVER THE SACRED BOOKS LOST DURING THE DELUGE. 345 346 VEDIC INDIA. Chaldean Babylon. The identity between Manu's divine preserver and Ea, the preserver of Hasisadra, is more than accidentally indicated by the fish-dis- guise of the former, which is also the symbolic form of the latter, as abundantly shown by the monu- ments,and even appended to the god's name in one of his most momentous incarnations, that of Ea-Han (Cannes), the Fish-god, the civilizer of Chaldea.' Nor are such details to be overlooked as that the Manu of the Indian books, whose righteousness and piety make him so exact a counterpart of the patriarchs Hasisadra and Noah, is said to be a king of Dravida, and is shown performing his devotions on the banks of a river of the land of Malabar, for they conclusively point to the way by which the most notable legend of the old poem of Erech travelled into India long before the future Aryan lords of the country were heard of. That it should have been part of the large mass of native lore in- corporated centuries later in the religious literature of the then ruling race, was but natural — it certainly deserves the honor. 7. It is scarcely necessary to point out the identity of the final incident — the stopping of the ship on a high mountain top (" Mountain of the land of Nizir," Mount Ararat, Himavat), followed by the dialogue between the preserved patriarch and his divine pre- server, the sacrifices he offers, and the mission given him of repeopling the earth. But it may be not un- interesting to recall a bit of modern folk-lore, familiar to us from infancy, yet which it might not occur to ' See Story of Chaldea, pp. 84, 85. 348 VEDIC INDIA, one person in a hundred to remember in connection with the venerable old legend, of which, however, it probably is an infinitesimal crumb or chip : the North-German tale of the Fisherman and the Little Fish, so charmingly told in dialect — as heard from the people — by the great . Grimm. The beginning, at least, is identical with that of the Manu legend. The fisherman catches a small fish, who begs for life and freedom, promising to requite the merci- ful deed, whereupon the compassionate fisherman throws him back into his native sea. The sequel, of course, is entirely different : it is a story of human greed and ambition, growing with the indulgence, and finally punished ; but the divine character of the Fish is maintained throughout and most vividly, even majestically, brought forth. How many of our favorite and most familiar stories, the humble com- forters of cottage and nursery, will be found to have wandered down to us by such devious and long- obliterated roads ! CHAPTER IX. THE RIG-VEDA : EARLY CULTURE. 1. No one who has read at all attentively the many Rig-Veda hymns and passages quoted in the preceding chapters but will have formed a more or less distinct picture of the civilization and culture of those earl}' times, of the intellectual and moral at- tainments of those who could think and sing thus. Out of things said or implied, mentioned directly or in the form of similes, the picture, stroke by stroke, must have grown into a goodly general sketch, con- juring up before us much the same phases of exist- ence as now go to make up human life : same in substance, different in garb ; same in kind, different in degree. Princes and warriors and priests, — battles and rural peace, — things of the farm, the field, and the forest, and the various crafts of men, — all con- tribute their quota to that sketch. We must now attempt to fill it in with more life-like details, more finished lights and shades — still from the same ex- haustless mine, the Aryan book of books — the Rig- Veda. 2. Philosophers of a gloomy turn have often said that the most important act of life is death, as it is 349 350 VEDIC INDIA. what we came into the world for. Certain it is that one of the first things we want to know about a race or nation is — what views it held upon that ever ab- sorbing, because ever mysterious, subject, and that our judgment of that race or nation greatly depends on what we learn of those views and of the honors it paid to its dead, its treatment of their remains and the ceremonies observed in connection therewith. This being the case, we shall not have to be ashamed of our early Aryan ancestors. For not many funeral rituals can vie in beauty and significance with that which we can reconstruct from their sacred books. The tenth book of the Rig-Veda contains several hymns which could have served no other purpose, and though it is avowedly a late book, the ground matter of such parts as this must be of necessity very ancient, for the conceptions about death and future life are always among a race's oldest. From the merest perusal of the ao-called funeral hymns, we see that the Aryas of the Sapta Sindhavah (and of course their later descendants), though they had a wholesome love of life and earnestly prayed that their dear ones and themselves might be spared to the full natural span of " a hundred winters," yet had no morbid terror of death, and, while keeping the departed in honor and loving remembrance, certainly did not mourn as those without hope. Their hope was that those who had gone before would lead a happy and glorified existence with the ancient Fathers of the race and their own ancestors down to the immediately preceding generation, hap- pily waiting to be joined by their own descendants, EARLY CULTURE. 35 I " feasting with the gods," in the realm of good King Yama. Thither their spirits were conveyed on the fiery pinions of the Messenger Agni, whose consum- ing touch had power only over the grosser, earth- born parts. This is the later form of funeral, which has endured among Brahmanic Hindus to this day, and the texts which accompany it we have no trouble in distinguishing from others, that could have fitted only a rite of burial, not of cremation. These are contained in the famous hymn X., i8, one of the most beautiful of its kind in any time or country. It is evident that burial was the earlier form. The words are so suggestive of the acts per- formed that it is easy to imagine, from them alone, the sacred action as it proceeds. The dead is laid on the ground, on a consecrated spot. His bow is in his hand ; his widow sits by him, near the head. Relatives and friends stand in a wide circle. The officiating priest places a stone at some distance from the body, within the circle ; it is the dividing bourne, beyond which the living may not pass, and which Mrityu, Death, is invited to respect. As he does this the priest speaks : " I. Depart, O Death, go thy way — the path which is thine own, far removed from that of the gods. To thee I speak, that hast eyes, hast ears : harm not our children, not our men." Then turning to the assembled mourners: "2. Ye who came hither in Death's footsteps, yourselves possessed of life, increasing in wealth of treasure and of progeny, be ye in spirit pure and holy ! — 3. Divided are the living from the dead. Propitious was our sacrifice this day, and we shall hence depart to dance and to 352 VEDIC INDIA. be merry, for still is life our own. — 4. This bourne I set, that of the living none may haste to yonder goal ; theirs be the full-prest measure of a hundred autumns, and may this rock keep Death away from them. — 5. As days on days still follow in succession, and season closely follows season, nor comes the later before the earlier, so shape their lives, Creator. — 6. Fulfil your term of years, and live to a ripe old age, as many as are here, running your race in turn, and may Tvashtar, the skilful Maker, give you length of days." Only after this blessing on the living has been pro- nounced, do the rites really begin. The women enter the consecrated precinct and pour oils and butter on the corpse, to the following text. " 7. These women here, not widows, wives of noble husbands, and mothers, let them first approach with unguents and with clarified butter ; tearless, not sorrowing, festally attired, let them go up to the dwelling (of the dead)." Here the brother of the deceased, as his represen- tative, or, in default of a brother, an adopted son, a pupil, or an old servant, takes the widow by the hand, saying : "8. Arise, O woman, to the world of life. His breath is gone, by whom thou liest, — who took thy hand once and espoused thee ; thy wedlock with him now is ended." ' Then the same person takes the bow out of the lifeless hand, with the words : ' It is these two verses — 7 and 8 — which have acquired such great celebrity and importance, as affording conclusive proof that the Vedas do not yield any precedent and authority for widow-burning, but quite and expressly the contrary. The sense of verse 7 has been per- verted by the change of two letters in one ivord, and some slighter dis- crepancies in the interpretation of another word. But those two letters really have to answer for the horrors of the suttee. EARLY CULTURE. 353 " 9. His bow I take from the hand of the dead, that it may be to us for help, and strength, and fame. Stay thou yonder ; we here, as doughty men, will, in battle, smite the foe." Now the actual interment begins ; the body is laid in the ground, the earth is shovelled over it, and a mound erected, the " house of death." As the dif- ferent acts are performed, the priest speaks the accompanying words : 10. Hie thee to Earth, the Mother ; to the wide-spread, blessed Earth ; to the pious man she is a maiden soft as wool ; may she guard thee from evil. — 11. Open wide, O Earth, oppress him not. Be gracious unto him ; shelter him kindly, cover him, Earth, even as a mother covers her infant with her garment. — 12. Now let the house of clay stand firm and steadfast, borne on a thousand pillars ; may it ever be sprinkled with clarified butter, and be a shelter unto him for aye. — 13. I have heaped up the earth around thee, and may this clod not hurt thee as I place it over thee. May the Fathers guard this house, and Yama prepare thee a dwelling in the world beyond." 3. The stern and sober spirit of this valediction, so healthily remote from idle sentiment and lament, yet not loveless withal, and breathing a simple faith, unmixed as yet with speculation, would alone point to the extreme antiquity of the rite it accompanies. When cremation was introduced, it became neces- sary to modify the ritual and adapt it to new texts. These are all contained in Book X., and are so sug- gestive as to require no commentary. Yet the hymn X., 18, was too old and sacred ever to be discarded ; it was only broken up into parts, some being recited during — or before — the cremation, and the others from verse 10 on, being reserved for the ceremony 354 VEDIC INDIA. of collecting and interring the bones. The follow- ing is this later ritual as it stands in the Domestic Laws (Grihya-Sutras) of Ashvalayana. This code 31 32 33 34 ^-y 32. — SACRIFICIAL IMPLEMENTS : PANS, DISHES, SPOONS, BOWLS, CHOP- PER, POKER (in the shape OF A HAND), KNIFE, SCRAPER, ETC. being a portion of the Vedic literature, and the funeral ritual it prescribes so exactly adapted to the texts in the Rig-Veda, we can hardly doubt its hav- EARLY CULTURE. 355 ing been in use already among the late Vedic Aryas, at all events when they had reached the valleys of the Ganga and Yamuna, where the transition from purely Vedic to Brahmanic culture must have been finally elaborated. 36 37 S3 S9 40 41, 33. — MORE DISHES : BOWLS, SPOONS, LADLE FOR THE GHEE (mELTED butter), sacrificial grass, kindling wood, burning WOOD, ETC. 4. After a spot, at a distance from dwellings, has been selected, in accordance with certain strictly prescribed requirements, the relatives of the dead man carry thither his sacred fires and the sacrificial implements he used in life, leading an animal — usu- 356 VEDIC INDIA. ally a black goat. When the procession arrives at the chosen spot, the priests walk round it thrice from right to left, sprinkling it with holy water and repeating the verse which drives away evil spirits : " Go hence ; withdraw; depart from here. The Pitris (Fathers) have already prepared for him a place of bliss. Yama holds ready for him an abode of rest, where blessings flow as rivers night and day." (X., 14, 9.) The three fires are then disposed and fuel is piled up between them. A black antelope's skin is spread out upon the pyre and strewn with sacrificial grass {kushd). Upon this the body is laid out and the widow takes her seat by the head. The rite begins with her being helped down from the pyre (with verse 8 of X., 18), and with the taking of the bow (with verse 9 of the same). A strange ceremony now follows ; the sacrificial implements — which, un- like the bow, are the dead man's inalienable prop- erty, almost a part of himself, that cannot be taken from him even in death — are disposed on the differ- ent parts of his body in a strictly prescribed order ; such an implement on his chest, such another on his head, some in his hands, others on his face, his sides, his thighs, etc., until none are left, when those that are hollow (ladles, dishes, spoons, etc.), are filled with melted butter. The goat, meanwhile, has been slain and flayed, and is stretched on the body, so as to fit it exactly, limb for limb, as a protection from the flames ; the whole is then covered with the hide. One of the texts recited in the course of this tedious operation is verse 10 of X., 14 : EARLY CULTURE. 357 " Go thy straight way, past the two dogs, the sons of Sarama, the spotted and four-eyed ; go where the Fathers, lavish of gifts, live in joy with Yama." After several oblations have been offered on the body itself, the priest gives the word : " Light the fires together ! " Omens are drawn for the future state of the deceased from the greater or lesser rapidity with which the fires reach the pyre and the body ; nor is it a matter of indifference which fire reaches it first. If all three touch the body at the same time, this is said to portend the highest luck. While the process of cremation is actually going on, the priest recites numerous hymns, or parts of hymns — the appropriate verses only, most of them very beautiful. The following (X., 14) is one of the finest : " I. Him who crossed the great mountains and spied out the road for many. King Yama Vaivasvata, the gatherer of men, honor with an oblation. Yama was the first who found the way to that home which cannot be taken from us. Those who are now born go by their own paths to the place whither our ancient fathers have de- parted. ..." {The deceased is addressed) : " Go forth, follow the ancient paths on which our Fathers went. The two kings shalt thou behold, Varuna and Yama, where they revel in bliss. There join Yama and the Fathers, where every wish is granted in the highest heaven ; free from blemishes enter thy home there, with a new and shining body clothing thyself. . . . {To Yama) : Let the two dogs, thy watchers, the four-eyed, the guardians of the road, protect this man ; make him prosperous, deliver him from suffering and disease. Yama's two messengers, brown, broad of nostril, and insatiable, wander about among men, taking away their lives : may they long let us behold the sun, and give this man renewed and happy life." Agni is then prayed to deal gently with his charge (X., 16) : 358 VEDIC INDIA. " Scorch him not, consume him not, O Agni ; rend not his skin or his limbs. When thou hast matured him, convey him to the Fathers. ..." {The deceased is addressed^ : " Let thine eye go to the sun " (Siirya), thy breath to the wind (Vayu) ; to earth or to the sky go with thy several parts, into the waters or into the plants, as best be- seems. The goat is thine, O Agni ; her kindle with thy heat, con- sume with thy flames. But this man's unborn part convey, assuming thy most auspicious forms, to the abode of the righteous. . . ." The tinhorn part ! Was ever the very essence of " the soul " more fehcitously expressed ? — A special guide is provided, in the person of Pushan, the pro- tector of wayfarers. (X., 17.) " May Pushan guide thee hence, the wise, the universal shepherd. . . . Pushan knows all the abodes ; he guides us safely, care- fully. . . . Pushan is born on both the paths, that of heaven and that of earth, and goes back and forth between both, knowing the way to the happiest abodes." ' " He who is burnt by one who knows all this goes to the heaven-world {svarga-lokd) with the smoke. This is certain." Thus the author of the Sutra, set- ting the seal of comforting assurance on the direc- tions just given for the performance of one of the most solemn and sacred of rites. 5. Before the body is quite consumed, the officiat- ing priest recites verse 3 of X., 18 (see above), where- upon all leave the place without turning to lookback. ' The context of this makes plain the highest (mystical) meaning of Pushan's title " Lord of the Path," the naturalistic meaning of which presents little difficulty. (See pp. 235, 236.) The "path," the " road," which he is asked to " lay out," is that from this world to the other; the "wayfarers," whose guide and protector he is, are the dead, on their way to " the happiest abodes." He shares with Agni the office of Psychoponipos. EARLY CULTURE. 359 On their way they bathe in pure water and, after donning clean clothes, sit where they are till night descends, when they go home and re-enter their dwellings as the stars appear, or while part of the sun-disk is still visible. The relatives of the dead lead a quiet and secluded life until the half consumed bones are collected and interred. This ceremony takes place about ten days later, on a certain, pre- scribed, auspicious day ; it is followed by that of heaping up the earth and placing a tombstone on the spot; the verses 10-13 of X., 18, are recited as the different acts are performed. On returning home, after bathing, the relatives perform the first shraddhd — rite with oblations to the deceased, who is now formally placed among the Pitris and entitled to the honors and worship which belong to that reverend company.* 6. The question so often asked, " Did the Vedic Aryas believe in a future life ? " becomes idle indeed in view of all this. But when we would inquire more particularly into their conception of the forms which that life was to assume, we find nothing definite. We are at first inclined to feel dis- appointed, but soon arrive to a perception that in this reticence lie a great beauty and charm. The hope, the faith, are very firm and definite. Death, though named " the Ender," ends only what had a beginning here, in this lower world. There is in man a part that was " not born " and therefore cannot die. That * " The proper meaning of shraddhd is " faith." A rite performed in honor of the departed is an act of faith, for it is believed that it will be mutually beneficial. 360 VEDIC INDIA. part, freed by the purifying flames from the earthly dross that clings to it, is " restored " to its home to lead a happy and immortal life, reunited to the friends that have " gone before." That is all. What is this life ? What are its conditions, its occupa- tions ? Vague imaginings only give answer. The blessed dead are admitted to contemplate the glory of " the two Kings," Varuna and Yama, where they sit under (or on ? ) " the tree of beautiful foliage, feasting and drinking," (X., 135) (soma of course) — aye, and to share in the feast, for are not the Fathers called " the soma-loving " ? an accepted manner of speech, to say that they (like the Ribhus) have received the gift of immortality. But all this is vague ; the one belief of a materialistic character which is positively ex- pressed and insisted on is that in a resurrection in the flesh, even while the body is supposed to be dis- integrated and resolved into its elementary compo- nent parts. In the same breath with which the priest addresses the departed, saying, " Let thine eye go to the sun," etc., he also bids him enter his heavenly home " clothed in a new and shining body," " free from blemishes," and immediately goes on : " Give up again, Agni, to the Fathers, him who comes offered to thee with oblations . . . let Jiiin meet his body. Whatever part of thee any blackbird, or ant, or serpent, or beast of prey has bitten, may Agni heal all that, and Soma, who has entered into the Brahmans." One thing appears certain : that the " new body " with which the departed was to " clothe himself," must have been imagined as a glorified, probably an EARLY CULTURE. 36 1 unsubstantial one. Was this a foreshadowing of the " astral body " of modern esoterism ? Why not ? Almost everything in India can be traced to the Veda. The most definite impression we receive, how- ever, is that of a floating, a hovering, in infinite space, in a flood, a sea of light. This impression is given and renewed by a number of passages all through the Rig : " Surya follows Ushas, the radiant, as a lover foUows a maiden, where the god-fearing live from age to age and go from bliss to bliss." (I., 115.) " In the midmost heaven, they lead a life of bliss." (X., 15.) "O might I enter Vishnu's blessed abode, where the god-fearing dwell in joy ; for they are the friendly host of the mighty strider, and the source of sweetness is in Vishnu's highest place . . . resplendent with light is the supernal abode." (I., 154.) And that most beautiful song of longing, of hope, of adoration, IX., 1 1 3 (" Where there is eternal light," etc. — see p. 180), is all bathed in and pervaded with the light that never was on land or sea. 7. So much for " the god-fearing." And what of the others ? Was there a hereafter for them, and how did the Aryas of early Vedic times picture it ? If they did, it was in even more indefinite and misty guise. In conformity with Aryan dualism, if the good live in eternal light, the wicked must be con- signed to darkness everlasting, and that is about all. Varuna and the other Adityas especially are the avengers of wrong, as we have seen, and they cast the unrepentant into a " pit," which is as greatly dreaded as their famous " nooses" or " fetters "— darkness, disease, and death. 362 VEDIC INDIA. " The keeper of Rita is not to be deceived. Full of wisdom, he surveys all beings. Those that are displeasing to him, the tingodly, he casts down into " the pit. . . ." (II., 26, 8.) " Remove your nooses, O gods [tlae Adityas] ; remove my sin ; seize me not as a bird in the nest. Be with us this day, O worship- ful ones ; I will tremblingly nestle against your heart ; protect us, ye gods, from the devouring wolf and from falling into the pit." (II., 29, 6.) " Indra holds no kinship with those who press no soma; he is neither friend nor brother to them ; he casts the unfriendly into the depths." (IV., 25, 6.) " Cast down our enemies into the nethermost darkness," a Rishi prays to Indra. 8. It was Hot uanecessary to dwell thus long on the vagueness, the indefiniteness — we might say the spirituality — of the Aryan conception of a future life as we find it expressed in the Rig-Veda, because it differs so exceedingly from what we are familiar with in later, Brahmanic, times. And the change soon comes. In the Atharva-Veda already we are confronted by a thoroughly materialistic paradise and hell. We are informed exactly of the pleasures which wait on the blessed dead, and the torments which the wicked dead suffer. The few delicate touches, which show us the Fathers " revelling in bliss " with Yama and Varuna under " the tree of beautiful foliage," which is the sky with its stars, are spread and flattened out into a broad description of prosaic delights : every pious inmate is approached by beautiful, luminous, gentle cows, who never kick and are always ready to be milked ; mild breezes and soft showers cool the air ; there are ponds of clari- fied butter, streams of honey, and rivers of milk and curds. No one is rich or poor, powerful or oppressed. EARLY CULTURE. 363 The beautiful verse of IX., 113 — "Where there is happiness and dehght, where joy and pleasure reside, where the desires of our desire are attained " — is in- terpreted in the sense of the most earthly delights, — with the assistance of the fascinating Apsaras, the Houris of Indian mythology. In short we have be- fore us Islam's paradise in its completeness. On the other hand the pit of nethermost darkness has become a hell — a " hell of hells " ' — where great criminals sit in a pool of blood and eat hair for food, while the tears of the wronged and the water in which the dead are washed are their only drink. Yama, too, the luminous, the gentle king of happy spirits, who was dreaded and terrible only because Death /jterri- rible after all, even at his mildest, changes fast into the grim ruler of the various hell-worlds {tdla, ndrakd), the ruthless judge and torture-master, tricked out in all the cheap horrors of the later popular devil. It is not yet so in the Artharva-Veda, to be sure, but there already the son of Vivasvat wears a forbidding aspect as the impersonation of Death itself — " Yama- Mrityu." 9. There are various kinds of Pitris : the Fathers of individual families, those of tribes, and the Fathers of the race. It is a general way nations have, this of making tutelary spirits of their remote ancestors, to whom they then look for aid and protection. They generally go the further length of making those ancestors god-descended, thus not only keeping up the dear and sacred family bond through all ages past and to come, but also asserting their own con- ' Talatala, the original form of the Greek iartaros. 364 VEDIC INDIA, nection with a heavenly home, their own originally- divine descent. This is but a way of expressing the dimly perceived higher and better self, the conscious- ness of the presence in us of a something divine, self-acting and independent of our will. Other nations have raised to this dignity their ancient heroes, the fighters and lawgivers, the founders of their states and royal houses. But the Aryas of India, true to the early developed sacerdotal bent of their race, claimed descent from their ancient sacri- ficers and priestly poets (Rishis) — their saints — and, through them, kinship with the gods. Thus arose the sacred hosts of heaven — the Angiras, singers of hymns, the Bhrigus, whose name connects them with the sacrificial fire,* and many others, generally in troops or groups ; also the numerous single saints or holy patriarchs, severally honored as the progenitors of sacred priestly families or of the human race itself, such as Vasishtha, Vishvamitra, Kashyapa, and numbers of others, later ones, not to be found in the Rig-Veda. To all these are ascribed not only extensive power, together with the con- stant desire to interfere in and direct the affairs of men, but the highest cosmical functions, even to active participation in the work of creation and that of preserving the worlds. This we find clearly indicated already in the Rig, foreign as it is to ^ " Bhrigu " comes from a root, Bhrij — " to burn, roast," and must have been an old name of " flame," of Lightning itself. It survives in Gv&ek phl^go, 'L,2X\r\.flagrare^ fulgere (to blaze, to yfame.j'fare, /?ash, be resplendent), with all their derivatives, chief of which is the Latin /m/^z^;'," lightning bolt," not to speak of their numerous pos- terity in our modern tongues. EARLY CULTURE. ' 365 the exuberant extravagances of later Brahmanism. What else but such cosmic work — expressed in conventional Vedic phrase — are the Angiras doing, when they " help Indra break open the stable and let out the cows"? or the Fathers (Pitris generally), when they are said to have adorned the black horse with pearls (to light the stars in the sky), and to have placed darkness in the night and light in the day or to have spread out heaven and earth in concert with Soma? (VI 1 1., 48, 13), or when they are called "warders of the Sun" (X., 154, 5), and said to have " brought the great light " ? It should be remembered, though, that they do all this, not in the naturalistic order of things, but through the spiritual power conferred by the fault- less performance of rites and sacrifices. It is as. im- personations of ritualistically perfect prayer that the Angiras " break open the stable," because such prayer has compelling force over nature, and brings rain, sunlight, keeps the world in place, etc. It is as the representatives of this same spiritual power that the Pitris have so much to do with ordering or producing natural phenomena. Nevertheless the path of the Fathers is distinct from that of the gods, for it is that of death (see X., 18, i, and 88, 15), by which all men are to follow. It is meet therefore that the oblations offered to both should also be different. So, while the Fathers are soma-lovers and soma-drinkers and have a general invitation to come and partake of it at sacrifices with the gods, special offerings are reserved for them at their own particu- lar commemorative festivals — the shraddhds — princi- 366 VEDIC INDIA. pally a kind of wheat cake or dumpling called /m