Handbook of History of Religions

SR No.: 007634
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Edward Washburn
Publisher: Sanmati Tirth Prakashan Pune
Total Pages: 678
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 2 MB

Page 112

Rain hast thou rained, and now do thou restrain it; The desert, too, hast thou made fit for travel; The plants hast thou begotten for enjoyment; And wisdom hast thou found for thy descendants.
The different meters may point to a collection of small hymns. It is to be observed that Parjanya is here the fathergod (of men); he is the Asura, the Spirit; and rain comes from the Shining Sky (Dyaus). How like Varuna!
The rain, to the poet, descends from the sky, and is liable to be caught by the demon, Vritra, whose rain-swollen belly Indra opens with a stroke, and lets fall the rain; or, in the older view just presented, Parjanya makes the cloud that gives the rain—a view united with the descent of rain from the sky (Dyaus). With Parjanya as an Aryan rain-god may be mentioned Trita, who, apparently, was a water-god, (=A]ptya, in general; and some of whose functions Indra has taken. He appears to be the same with the Persian Thraetaona (=A]thwya; but in the Rig Veda he is interesting mainly as a dim survival of the past.[32] The washing out of sins, which appears to be the original conception of Varuna's sin-forgiving, [33] finds an analogue in the fact that sins are cast off upon the innocent waters and upon Trita-also a water-god, and once identified with Varuna (viii. 41. 6). But this notion is so unique and late (only in viii. 47) that Bloomfield is perhaps right in imputing it to the [later] moralizing age of the Br[=a]hmanas, with which the third period of the Rig Veda is quite in touch.
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FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Compare I. 134. 3.)
[Footnote 2: For the different views, see Perry, JAOS. xi. p. 119; Muir, OST. v. p. 77.]