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APPENDIX.
191
parişahas, had applied himself to the practising of yoga with a view to acquire psychic powers, and had developed certain occult faculties, became the founder of a system of religion of a type intermediate between the Sankhyan and the Yoga creeds. It would thus seem that the system founded by Marichi, which consisted of a superstructure of mysticism raised on a foundation of fragmentary truth, borrowed from the creed of the Holy Tirthamkaras, is the real basis of the mythology of the Vedas and the subsequent Puranas.
The force of the observation that the superstructure of Vedic mythology is based on a foundation of fragmentary truth taken from the Jaina Siddhậnta, would be evident to any one who would seriously reflect on the origin of the doctrine of transmigration and its underlying principle of Karma. That this doctrine was known to the author or authors of the Vedas is apparent from the passage in the Rig Veda which speaks of the soul as 'departing to the waters or the plants' (see Indian Myth and Legend' by Donald A. Mackenzie, p. 116), as well as from the general tenor of the philosophy underlying the Vedic mythology.
If it be conceded in agreement with Yaska, the most famous even if not the earliest commentator of the Vedas, that there are three important deities in the Vedas, Agni whose place is on the earth, Vayu or Indra whose place is in the air, and Surya whose place is in the sky, it becomes easy to perceive that these deities receive severally many appellations in consequence of the diversity of their functions (see 'The Hindu Mythology' by W. J. Wilkins, p. 9). We have explained
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