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BUDDHIST INDIA
who, possessed by the god, will, as Pythias, prophesy smooth things. And Vishnu, though mentioned in our poem under the name of Venhu, has scarcely as yet appeared above the horizon. Pajjunna is still the rain.god in the Suttantas; he is mentioned in both poeins; and has retained this character even in the folklore.'
I know of no other Vedic gods mentioned in this literature. Dyaus, Mitra, and Sāvitri, Pūshan, the Idityas, the Asvins and the Maruts, Aditi and Diti and Urvašī, and many more, are all departed. They survive only within the enclosures of the Vedic schools. The people know them no longer.
Now there is no doubt a long interval of time between the close of the Rig Veda collection of hymns and the rise of Buddhism. The Vedic anthology, small as it is, may not give, even for its own time, a complete statement of Indian belief. Some of the differences between Vedic mythology and popular religion at the time of the rise of Buddhisin inay therefore be due to the influence of an unrecorded past. But this can only explain a part, and probably a small part of the difference. The old gods, that is the old ideas, when they have survived, have been so much changed; so many of them have not survived at all; so many new ones have sprung into vigorous life and wide-reaching influence, that one conclusion is inevitable. The common view that the Indians were very different from other folk in similar stages of development, that to that difference was due the stolid, not to say stupid, conserva
J. 1. 332, +. 253 : C. P. 3. 10. 7.
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
www.umaragyanbhandar.com
