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xxvi
VEDIC HYMNS.
And I may add that in Estonian also we find storm-gods called Marutu uled or maro, plural maruda.
Fourthly, the hymns addressed to the Maruts seemed to me to possess an interest of their own, because, as it is difficult to doubt the identity of the two names, Marut and Mars, they offered an excellent opportunity for watching the peculiar changes which the same deity would undergo when transferred to India on one side and to Europe on the other. Whether the Greek Ares also was an offshoot of the same root must seem more doubtful, and I contented myself with giving the principal reasons for and against this theoryb.
Though these inducements which led me to select the hymns to the Maruts as the first instalment of a translation of the Rig-veda could hardly prevail with me now, yet I was obliged to place them once more in the foreground, because the volume containing the translation of these hymns with very full notes has been used for many years as a text book by those who were beginning the study of the Rigveda, and was out of print. In order to meet the demand for a book which could serve as an easy introduction to Vedic studies, I decided to reprint the translation of the hymns to the Maruts, and most of the notes, though here and there somewhat abbreviated, and then to continue the same hymns, followed by others addressed to Rudra, Vayu, and Vâta. My task would, of course, have been much easier, if I had been satisfied with making a selection, and translating those hymns, or those verses only, which afford no very great difficulties. As it is, I have grappled with every hymn and every verse addressed to the Maruts, so that my readers will find in this volume all that the Vedic poets had to say about the Stormgods.
In order to show, however, that Vedic hymns, though they begin with a description of the most striking phenomena of nature, are by no means confined to that
. Bertram, Ilmatar, Dorpat, 1871, p. 98. • Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii, p. 357.
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| SR No. | 007685 |
| Book Title | Grihya Sutras |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | Hermann Oldenberg |
| Publisher | Oxford |
| Publication Year | 1886 |
| Total Pages | 2642 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 49 MB |