________________
256
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(AUGUST, 1883.
SEAMY SIDE OF THE VEDIC RELIGION. Buslimen and Hottentots. The evidence for the By Andrew Lang, M.A.
Vedio religion is to be found, of course, in the It may seem almost blasphemous to say that
y that hymns of the Veda and in the ritual of the the Vedas have their seamy side; but truths Brahmanas. Dates cannot be given with any even more painful, if possible, than this must be certainty, but we may assuine the collection of faced in the sacred interests of science. Mr. Max the Voda to be not later than 1000 B. o., while the Müller has recently said, in India; What it can
Brahmanas (directions for the ritual of sacrifice Teach Us, that "in the Vedas we have a nearer
and explanations of the separate details) may, we approach to a beginning, and an intelligible be- presume, be three or four hundred years later. ginning, than in the wild invocations of Hottentots The Brahmanas, however, contain many myths and Bushmen." The Vedas, according to Max and legends which may be as old as, and even older Müller, are the religious hymns of a highly civil. than, the Vedas; just as the scholia on Homer ized people, of a people whose ancestors were contain legends which, in one form or another, practically civilized before the Aryan separation, may be older than the Iliad or Odyssey. Other before the language in which the hymns were legends are clearly the late explanatory inventions chanted was a language at all. It is difficult to of a superstitious priesthood, working on the old see how the religion of a society so long matured lines of mythological belief.....
n be nearer "the beginning than the religion In the Rig Veda human sacrifice has left of races who have not yet evolved or accepted its traces, but the practice chiefly endures in civilized society. Again, there is nothing parti- symbols and substitutes. Behind the Veda, ear. cularly "wild" in some of the "invocations" of lier than the Veda," nearer the beginning" than Bushmen. Qing, an uncorrupted Bushman, gave the Voda, was the age of human sacrifice. Wilson the first Europeans he met, Mr. Orpen and his writes (R. VI, 59-63; I. xxiv,) that it is inferrible companions, the following account of the rudi. from some passages that "human sacrifices were not ments of his faith :-"He said, Cagn made all unknown, although infrequent." One famous story things, and we pray to him. I said (Mr. Orpen is accepted as proof that human sacrifice was, if writes) How do you pray to him?' Answer: (innot actually practised, at least a lively recollection a low imploring voice), O Cagn, O Cagn, are we of the religious spirit. Among other passages, not your children? Do you not see our hunger ? a valuable example is found in the Satapatha Give us food! And he gives us both hands full." Brdhmana (Sacred Books of the East, vol. XII, (Cape Monthly Magazine, July 1874). Take an p. 59). A cake is offered as a substitute for an example of the "wild invocations" of the Banks animal " which, it would seem, was originally a islander. Here is the prayer of a Papuan in dan- substitute for the human sacrifice." "At first the ger at sea. He addresses Qate :-" Qate, Mara- gods," says the Satapatha Brahmana, "offered wa! Look down on me; smooth the sea for us up a man as a victim." When he was offered up, two, that I may go safely on the sea. Beat down the sacrificial essence went out of him. It en. for me the crests of the tide-rip that I may come tered into the horse, and thence into a number of to a quiet landing-place" (Codrington, "Religious
animal victims. Finally, it entered the earth and Beliefs in Melanesia," Journal of the Anthropo. was dug up in rice and barley, and therefore rice logical Institute, Feb. 1881). Compare the prayer and barley cakes are now substituted for human and of Odysseus to the Phæacian river:-" O King, animal sacrifices. Similar substitutes for human whosoever thou art, unto thee am I come as to one sacrifice,"men of straw," are now offered by the that receiveth prayer. ... nay, pity me, O King, Oraons, a wild tribe of India, and by other races. for I avow myself thy suppliant. So spake he, A curious vestige of human sacrifice is found in 3 and the god stayed his stream and with hela his famous hymn, the Ninetieth of the Tenth Book waves and made the water smooth before him." of the Rig Veda. The hymn tells us how all These Greek, Bushman and Papuan prayers are things were made out of the mangled limbs of all on a level, and all are not only near the begin. a magnified non-natural man, Purusha. Now, ing, but near the heart, of religious hope. It is whether this hymn be an ancient one or not, true that Cagn is a kind of grasshopper, and whether it be " near the beginning" or not, the Marawa a spider. But the religions sentiment legend which it relates is found among Scan. is there, undisturbed by the ludicrous myths of dinavians, Iroquois, Egyptians, Greeks and other the spider and grasshopper. We propose to show races. Among these people the world, or great that civilized and ancient as was the society which part of it, is constructed out of the mangled produced the Vedic poems, yet the faith of Vedic frame of a non-natural man or giant. Among worshippers was very near akin in the wildness the Vedic bards the man or god is Purusha; of its details and of its mythology to the faith of among the Iroquois he is Chokanipok; among the
