________________
324
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
regarded as heroes, conquerors of drought and night, of the waters and the dawns. Between them and Indra the difference appears then to be above all in the point which the personification of the element has reached, or rather in the consistency with which the distinction between the element and the god who presides over it is observed. Whilst, in the cases of Agni, Soma and other gods formerly mentioned, the element and the god, though distinguished,.... are always tending to be confounded anew,-in Indra, who is much more fixed, more thoroughly transformed by anthropomorphism, they remain decidedly and definitively separated. Indra is the god who makes the sun rise after the dawn, and who, armed with the lightning, makes the celestial waters flow (pp. xv. f).
The conception of the order of the world as fixed in the myth of Indra, is dualistic. Good, i.e. in the physical sense-light and rain, and evil, that is to say, darkness and drought, are in it referred to two orders of opposing powers. From Indra, the god, men expect only good. Evil is entirely the work of demons, the Panis, Sushna, Vala, and the most famous of all, Vritra, considered especially as the robber of the waters. Indra combats these demons, smites, kills, or mutilates them; and by his victory, he delivers the dawns and the waters, and restores to men light and rain. To this mythological conception a particular conception of the worship corresponds... The sacrifice retains its action, in a certain way magical, upon the celestial phenomena. But it no longer does so directly, but through the instrumentality of the god whom the consecrated beverage intoxicates, excites, and enables to sustain, and happily terminate, his conflict with the demons (p. xvii.)
An essential opposition of nature and attributes is to be noted between Indra, and such deities as Parjanya, Rudra, Savitri-Tvashtri and the Adityas. To mark that opposition I shall call the latter, for want of another name, the sovereign gods, because they rule unopposed over that world over which Indra can only manifest his power by constantly repeated victories...
All these divinities belong to an unitarian conception of the order of the world in which good and evil, that is to say, the day and the night, the rain and the drought, are referred to one and the same personage, or to one and the same category of celestial personages. It results thence that these deities have a double aspect, propitious and severe : an equivocal character which, in opposition to the exclusively benevolent character of Indra, may be interpreted in a malevolent sense, so as to assimilate them, in a certain measure, to the demons of the dualistic conception (p. xix.)
[NOVEMBER, 1879.
The study of the sovereign gods of the Vedic religion will lead us to treat the relations of that religion with general morality..
The hymns are not the works of moralists. Composed for the most part with a view to the ceremonies of worship, they contain, beyond the description of these ceremonies, and the praises of the gods, little but an expression of the desires of their worshippers, and a constantly reiterated appeal to their liberality, and for their protection. Not only is morality never formulated there in precepts; but even in the way of allusion, all that the authors of the hymns allow us to perceive of their ideas regarding the vices or crimes to be shunned, and the virtues to be practised, is limited to very vague generalities..... Of the two literary monuments, the most ancient which our race possesses, the naturalistic and liturgical poetry of the Rig-Veda, and the Homeric Epic,-the first has over the second an indisputable advantage, that of throwing a much clearer light on the formation of myths 'and ancient religious beliefs. But if we have only to do with determining the moral condition of a primitive society, the advantage is altogether on the side of the Homeric Epic, and it is too great to admit of any comparison between it and the Vedic hymns.
But the Rig-Veda, while failing to disclose the particular forms of moral life manifested by the ancestors of the Indian race, reveals at least the intensity of that life, the sentiment, at once lively and deep, which they had of a purity to be preserved, or restored, of taints to be avoided or purged by expiation. The Vedic poets had, in the simple prayers addressed to their gods, no opportunity, as Homer had, to show us the morality of their time in action; but the moral conscience utters in these prayers the only language it was then called to hold: the religious language, the moral sentiment, take in them the only form they could there naturally assume-that of an appeal to the divine justice, and above all to the divine mercy (p. xx. f.)
The first obligation which the Vedic Aryas owed to their gods, was the observance of their worship with its ceremonies. Every omission and mistake in the fulfilment of these rites was a fault. But the consciousness of that fault, and the terrors it causes, do not necessarily belong to the order of moral sentiments in the sense in which we understand that expression. So long as everything passes between the offender and the person offended, we may believe that we merely witness a quarrel in which, on both sides, personal interests alone are concerned. The mere anxiety of the god to avenge the offence against himself
