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LECTURE IV.
155
addressed to Varuna, the Greek Oủpavos, an ancient name of the sky and of the god who resides in the sky.
I shall read you one verse at least in the original - it is the 86th hymn of the seventh book of the Rigveda--so that you may hear the very sounds which more than three thousand years ago were uttered for the first time in a village on the borders of the Sutledge, then called the Satadru, by a man who felt as we feel, who spoke as we speak, who believed in many points as we believe-a dark-complexioned Hindu, shepherd, poet, priest, patriarch, and certainly a man who, in the noble army of prophets, deserves a place by the side of David. And does it not show the indestructibility of the spirit, if we see how the waves which, by a poetic impulse, he started on the vast ocean of thought have been heaving and spreading and widening, till after centuries and centuries they strike to-day against our shores and tell us, in accents that cannot be mistaken, what passed through the mind of that ancient Aryan poet when he felt the presence of an almighty God, the maker of heaven and earth, and felt at the same time the burden of his sin, and prayed to his God that He might take that burden from him, that He might forgive him his sin? When you listen to the strange sounds of this Vedic hymn, you are listening, even in this Royal Institution, to spirit-rapping—to real spirit-rapping. Vasishtha iš really among us again, and if you will accept me as his interpreter, you will find that we can all understand what the old poet wished to sayı:
1 M.M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature,' p. 540.
