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[AUGUST, 1883. from the beginning, for he "conquered heaven by austerity," a method of obtaining celestial promotion which is open to mortals. Indra was a great soma drinker. He once swigged thirty bowls of soma, though Dr. Haug, who has tried the liquor, could only manage one teaspoonful. According to Sayana, Indra took the shape of a quill when he went for soma, as Odin was an eagle when he flew off into the mead, and Yehl (the Thlinkeet god) was in a raven's shape when he stole the water. Indra's great feat was the slaughter of a serpent, which, like the frog in the Murri and Californian myths, had swallowed all the water. Indra also recovered some cows belonging to the gods which had been stolen.
It would take several articles to unfold all the seamy side of Vedic religion. We have merely touched on Indra; the chronique scandaleuse of his divine companions must be left untold, or told in a future essay. Suffice it to remark that as Racine says of the Greek gods, burning was too good for most of the Vedic deities, if we regard them in the seamy aspect of their legend. That lofty moral prayers are addressed to such creatures is a proof of the conservatism of religion, and of that moral advance by which men's ethical conceptions are always moving beyond the religious ideas bequeathed by their past experience. If any one wishes to see at a glance how much savage thought persisted till the age of the Brahmanas, let him compare the myths of the constellations (Satapatha Brahmana,-Sacred Books of the East, vol. XII, pp. 282-286), with the similar myths in Brough Smyth's Aborigines of Victoria, or with any collection of savage stellar myths which he may have at hand. The prize for ferocious license of puerile fancy must be given to the Brdhmanas. Max Müller says the contrast between the myths of real savages and those of Aryans is strong," though "very difficult to explain." We think the chief difference is that the savage in this are told, sans phrase, by people to whom they still seem natural, while Aryans have sometimes added their ritualistic idea to the savage myths they retain, and have sometimes attempted to explain them away as allegories, or as founded on linguistic misconceptions. Except on the hypothesis that the Aryans came civilized into the world, they must have descended from savage ancestors. That they retained savage practices, such as human sacrifice and much worse things, is universally admitted. Why should they not have retained savage ideas in religion and mythology, especially as of savage ideas Aryan mythology and religion are full to the brim p1
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
The origin of the gods is conceived of in various ways. Sometimes, as in Greek, Maori and Mangaian myths, Heaven and Earth are regarded as two persons indissolubly united, who begat the gods, and were finally thrust apart by their own offspring, by Maui, or Kronos, or Indra. The gods are not naturally or necessarily immortal, any more than they are in Scandinavian mythology. They drink immortality from the charmed ocean of milk, or, in an earlier myth, they overcome death by means of certain sacrifices, much to the chagrin of death. Coming to individual gods, we find a legend about Indra which may or may not be "near the beginning" of religious thought, but which is painfully near the ideas of the Hottentots, which are wild. "What god, O Indra, was present in the fray when thou didst slay thy father, seizing him by the foot ?" asks a Vedic poet (R. V. IV, 18.12), quoted by Dr. Muir. To explain this Vedic text (which in itself is a little damaging) a passage from the Black Yajur Véda is quoted. "Yajña desired Dakshina. He consorted with her. Indra was apprehensive of this. He reflected, Whoever is born of her, will be this.' Having considered, he"-took steps which caused Dakshina to produce a cow. Thus the Rig Veda observes (IV. 18.1.):-"His mother, a cow, bore Indra, an unlicked calf." Now HeitsiEibib, a god of the Namas, was also borne by a COW. "There was grass growing, and a cow came and ate of that grass, and she brought forth a young bull." This bull was Heitsi-Eibib (Hahn. Tsuni Gamo: the Supreme Being of the Hottentots, p. 68). The Véda and the "wild invocations of the Hottentots" are not so absolutely discrepant, then, in their accounts of the birth of gods. Indra is also said to be referred to in the Véda as a Ram," of which," says Wilson, "no very satisfactory explanation is given," though the Ram-god of ancient Egypt is familiar to all," and was worshipped (Herodotus, ii. 32), with rites precisely like those of the Buzzard among the Indians of California. The Ram, like the Buzzard, was sacred all the year; but on one solemn day the Ram, like the Buzzard, was sacrificed to himself. By an interesting coincidence, Indra, the Sheep, and the Kshattriya caste were all born at one moment from the breast and arms of Prajapati, as, in the Mangaian myth, Tangaroa was born from the arm of Papa. Whether such ideas are the birth of civilized thought, or are retained from a state of thought like that of Hottentots and Mangaians of the past, it seems almost superfluous to inquire. According to a Vedic hymn, Indra cannot well have been a god
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1 Saturday Review, Feb. 24, 1883.
