II. BOOK and although the struggle in which he is constantly engaged has indefinitely affected the faith of Christendom, yet the deity himself has but little of a purely moral or spiritual element in his character. is true that he is sometimes invoked as witnessing all the deeds of men and thus as taking cognisance of their sins; but the warfare which he has to wage is purely a physical conflict, and it is chiefly in the phrases by which his adversary is described, that we find the germs of the dualistic creed which bears the name of Zoroaster. Nowhere then, in the oldest monuments of Hindu thought, is the real character of Indra lost sight of. His home is in the bright heaven; but, as his name denotes,' he is specially the bringer of the most precious of all boons to a thirsty and gaping land. He is the giver of the rain which falls on the earth when the tyranny of the scorching wind is overpast. The might and majesty of Indra. In vain is Indra assailed in his career by the same enemies which seek to destroy the infant Heraklês. The Rakshasa fares no better than the snakes. "Vyansa, exulting and striking hard blows, smote thee, Maghavan, upon the jaw; whereupon, being so smitten, thou provedst the stronger and didst crush the head of the slave with the thunderbolt." " Like Heraklês and Phoibos again, he has to go in search of lost or stolen cattle. With the conveying Maruts, "the traversers of places difficult of access," he discovers the cows hidden in their caves. "Great is thy prowess, Indra, we are thine. Satisfy, Maghavan, the desires of thy worshipper. The vast heaven has acknowledged thy might; this earth has been bowed down through thy vigour. "Thou, thunderer, hast shattered with thy bolt the broad and massive cloud into fragments, and hast sent down the waters that were confined in it, to flow at will: verily thou alone possessest all power." 3 So, again, addressing Indra as Parjanya the rain-bringer, the poet says, "The winds blow strong, the lightnings flash, the plants spring up, the firmament dissolves; earth becomes fit for all creatures, when Parjanya fertilises the soil with showers."4 "Master of tawny steeds, the remotest regions are not remote for thee." 1 "Indra, a name peculiar to India, admits of but one etymology, i.e. it must be derived from the same root, whatever that may be, which in Sanskrit yielded indu, drop, sap.”—Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 430. vol. iii. p. 156. 3 lb. i. 154. s Ib. iii. 37. • Ib. ii. 373. INDRA AND THE HARITS. 1 I. 161 "At the birth of thee who art resplendent, trembled the heaven CHAP. and trembled the earth through fear of thy wrath: the mighty clouds were confined: they destroyed (the distress of drought), spreading the waters over the dry places." Lastly, as the solar god, he is the Wanderer, like the Teutonic Wegtam, like Odysseus, Sigurd, Dionysos, Phoibos, Theseus, Bellerophôn, Oidipous, Heraklês, and Savitar. "Wonderful Indra, wanderer at times, thou art verily the granter of our desires." " rain Indra then is the lord of the heaven, omnipotent and all-seeing: Indra the but so had been, or rather was, his father Dyu; and thus some bringer. epithets which in the west are reserved for Zeus are in the east transferred to Indra, and the Jupiter Stator of the Latins reappears as the Indra sthâtar of the Hindu." The rain-bringer must be younger than the sky in which the clouds have their birthplace; but however sharply his personality may be defined, the meaning of the name is never forgotten. As the Maruts, or winds, are said sometimes to course through Dyaus (the heaven), so the clouds sometimes move in Indra (the sky). In all the phrases which describe this god, the local colouring arising from the climate of northern India may be plainly discerned. Although the Delian Phoibos soon belts his golden sword to his side, yet for some time after his birth he lies in the white and spotless robe in which the nymphs had wrapped him. The Vedic Indra awakes sooner to the consciousness of his power, and as soon as he is born, the slayer of Vritra asks his mother, "Who are they that are renowned as fierce warriors?" Like the Hellenic Apollôn, he has golden locks and a quiver of irresistible arrows; but the arrows have a hundred points and are winged with a thousand feathers. In his hand he holds the golden whip which Phoibos gives to Hermes as the guardian of his cattle; and like Helios, he is borne across the heavens in a flaming chariot drawn by the tawny or glistening steeds called the Harits, whose name and whose brightness alone reappear in the Charites of the Hellenic land, but who still retain the form most familiar to the Hindu in the Xanthos and Balios who are yoked to the car of Achilleus. Like the streaming locks from the head of Phoibos, so the beard of Indra flashes like lightning, as he II. BOOK speeds on his journey through the heaven. As looking down on the wide earth spread beneath, he is possessed, like Apollon, of an inscrutable wisdom. Like him also, he chases the Dawn, Dahanâ or Daphnê, of whom he is said to be sometimes the father, sometimes the son, and sometimes the husband; and as Phoibos causes the death of Daphnê, so Indra is said to shatter the chariot of Dahanâ.1 Physical conflict between light and darkness The prayers addressed to this god show that the chief idea associated with him was that of an irresistible material power. The Hindu, as he comes before the deity to whom he looks for his yearly harvest, assumes unconsciously the attitude of the Baal-worshipper of Syria. But the real prayer of the heart is addressed to Varuņa, as the Greek in his hour of need prays always to Zeus. The cry for mercy from those who through thoughtlessness have broken the law. of God is never sent up to Indra, although, like Heraklês, "he engages in many conflicts for the good of man with overwhelming power.' It was impossible that it should be so, while the great work for which Indra might be said to exist was the battle for life or death with the hateful monster who imprisons the rain-clouds in his dungeons. This battle is brought before us under a thousand forms. His great enemy Vritra, the hiding thief, is also Ahi, the strangling snake, or Paņi the marauder. 3 "Ahi has been prostrated beneath the feet of the waters which the Vritra by his might had obstructed." 4 He appears again as Atri, a 1 In this myth Dahanâ is regarded as hostile to Indra and as meditating mischief, a thought which might easily be suggested by the legends of Arethousa and Daphnê. Her shattered car reposes, however, on the banks of the Vipar (river or water), an incident which recalls the disappearance of Arethousa or Daphnê in the waters from which Aphroditê rises.-H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, vol. ii. p. 178. 2 The power of Indra is the one theme of the praise accorded to him in R. V. vii. 32. The worshipper calls on him who holds the thunderbolt with his arm, whom no one can check if he wishes to give, who makes mortal men obtain spoil in fighting, who is the benefactor of every one, whatever battles there be, who is the rich of old and to be called in every battle.-Max Muller, Sanskrit Literature, 543. "This contest with the clouds," says Professor H. H. Wilson (Introduction to R. V. Sanhita, xxx.), "seems to have suggested to the authors of the Suktas name which may perhaps be the the martial character of Indra on other occasions, and he is especially described as the god of battles, the giver of victory to his worshippers, the destroyer of the enemies of religious rites, the subverter of the cities of the Asuras." The stanza known as the Hansavatí Rich is noteworthy as exhibiting the germs of more than one myth. Indra "is Hansa (the sun) dwelling in light: Vasu (the wind) dwelling in the firmament: the invoker of the gods (Agni) dwelling on the altar: the guest (of the worshipper) dwelling in the house (as the culinary fire): the dweller amongst men (as consciousness): the dweller in the most excellent (orb, the sun): the dweller in truth, the dweller in the sky (the air), born in the waters, in the rays of light, in the verity (of manifestation), in the (Eastern) mountain, the truth (itself)."-H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, iii. 199. 3 H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, i. 151. Ib. i. 87. INDRA AND HIS ENEMIES. same as the Atli of the Volsung tale and the Etzel of the Nibelung song. "Thou, Indra, hast opened the cloud for the Angirasas: thou hast shown the way to Atri who vexes his adversaries by a hundred doors." 1 He is also Namuki (the Greek Amykos), and Sambara. "Thou, Indra, with thy bolt didst slay afar off the deceiver Namuki." "Thou hast slain Sambara by thy resolute self." 3 "Verily thou hast made me, Indra, thy associate, when grinding the head of the slave Namuki like a sounding and rolling cloud." In the same way Indra is the slayer of Bala, of Chumuri, Dhuni, Pipon, Sushna, and many others, and against him the strength of the Rakshasas is concentrated in vain, for Indra scatters them "with his friend the thunderbolt." On the issue of this conflict depends, it is true, the welfare of all human creatures. The victory of Indra brings with it wealth of corn and wine and oil, but the struggle and its issue are alike external to the human spirit. In other words, the religious instinct found little scope in the phrases which described the offices of Indra, and most assuredly had nothing to do with suggesting them. It was not on the soil of Hindustan that the momentous physical struggle between Indra and his enemy was to become a spiritual struggle of still more fearful proportions. 163 CHAP. I. The wife of Indra is Indranî, who alone of the goddesses who The wife bear the names of the gods is associated with her husband. Like of Indra. the rest, she has but a vague and shadowy personality. But although the goddesses who are not thus simply developed from the names of their consorts are far more prominent, yet even these are spoken of in terms little resembling the language addressed to the supreme god under his many names. Ahanâ is a daughter of Dyaus, and her might is great, but Indra is mightier still. Ushas is hard to vanquish; but Indra shatters her chariot, while Saranyû, the Harits, and the Rohits are rather beings who do his will than deities possessed of any independent power. In this respect a vast gulf separates the later from the early mythology of the Hindus; and although Mahâdeva retains a nominal supremacy, yet the popular mind dwells less on the god than on the awful terrors of his wife, whether known as Uma, Durga, or Kali. In an inquiry designed chiefly to bring out 136. H. H. Wilson, R. V. Sanhita, i. 2 lb. i. 147. 3 Ib. i. 148. 577. • Ib. i. 279. BOOK Place of Brahma in the Hindu theogony. the points of resemblance and difference between cognate mythological systems, we are not called upon to enter the unwholesome labyrinth in which a morbid philosophy has bewildered and oppressed a race once more simple and perhaps more truthful in their faith than the forefathers of the Hellenic and even of the Teutonic nations. The more modern Hindu traditions may have an interest for the theologian or the philosopher, while the ingenious symbolical interpretations which make anything mean anything may be as noteworthy in the pages of Brahmanic commentators as in those of Chrysostom, Gregory, or Augustine. But they lead us away into a world of their own, where it becomes scarcely worth while to trace the faint vestiges of early thought which may be here and there discerned in the rank crop of cumbrous and repulsive fancies. Nor is there much profit in lists even of earlier deities in whom we have little more than a name or an epithet. If the earth is called Nishtigrî, we have only another word denoting Prithivî the wife of Dyaus. In Sarasvati, the watery, we have, first, a name given to the river which with the Indus and the waters of the Penjab made up the seven streams of the ancient Hindu home, and then to a goddess who, as inspiring the hymns composed in her honour, became identified with Vach,' Voice, and was invoked as the muse of eloquence. As such, she is produced on the mountain-top, as Athênê Akria springs from the forehead of Zeus. Much in the same way, Nirriti,3 the western land, to which Yama had first crossed the rapid waters, became first the land of death, and afterwards a personification of evil. In Sraddhâ we have nothing more than a name for religious faith." SECTION IV.-BRAHMA. If an examination of the Vedic theology tends to prove that it was wholly one of words and names, the impression is not weakened as we survey the ponderous fancies of later times. The fabric of Brahmanic sacerdotalism may have reached gigantic proportions, and may exhibit a wonderful ingenuity in the piecing together of its several parts, but it cannot be regarded as the result of a logical system. The properties of Vishņu are those of Agni, Vayu, and Sûrya; and as Agni is all the deities, so also is Vishnu. The cha 1 Gr. ἔπος, εἴπειν, ἀκούειν, Latin Vox, vocare. 2 Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iv. p. 360, note. Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 515. Is the name Nirriti connected with that of the Ithakan Neritos and the Leukadian "The Latin word credo, 'I believe,' is the same as the Sanskrit Sraddhâ."-Max Müller, Chips, i. 42. Sayce, Introduction to the Science of Language, ii. 28. |