The Religions of India Part 15

[Footnote 3: i. 58. 4; v. 7. 7; vi. 3. 4.]

[Footnote 4: iii. 14. 4; i. 71. 9; vi. 3. 7; 6. 2; iv. 1.

9.]

[Footnote 5: Or of time or order.]

[Footnote 6: Or 'Finder-of-beings.']

[Footnote 7: _Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertrankes_.]

[Footnote 8: RV. vi. 16. 13: "Thee, Agni, from out the sky Atharvan twirled," _nir amanthata_ (cf. Promantheus). In x.

462 the Bhrigus, [Greek: phleghyai], discover fire.]

[Footnote 9: Compare v. 2. 1. Sometimes Agni is "born with the fingers," which twirl the sticks (iii. 26. 3; iv. 6.

8).]

[Footnote 10: Compare ii. 1: "born in flame from water, cloud, and plants ... thou art the creator."]

[Footnote 11: Bergaigne, i. p. 32 ff. The question of priestly names (loc. cit. pp. 47-50), should start with Bharata as [Greek: purphoros], a common t.i.tle of Agni (ii.

7; vi. 16. 19-21). So Bhrigu is the 's.h.i.+ning' one; and Vasishtha is the 'most s.h.i.+ning' (compare Vasus, not good but s.h.i.+ning G.o.ds). The priests got their names from their G.o.d, like Jesuits. Compare Gritsamada in the Bhrigu family (book ii.); Vicv[=a]-mitra, 'friend of all,' in the Bharata family (book iii.); Gautama V[=a]madeva belonging to Angirasas (book iv.); Atri 'Eater,' epithet of Agni in RV. (book v.); Bharadv[=a]ja 'bearing food' (book vi.); Vasishtha (book vii.); and besides these Jamadagni and Kacyapa, black-toothed (Agni).']

[Footnote 12: De Isid. et Osir. 46. Compare Windischmann, _Ueber den Somacultus der Arier_ (1846), and Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, vol. ii. p. 471. Hillebrandt, _Vedische Mythologie_, i. p. 450, believes _haoma_ to mean the moon, as does _soma_ in some hymns of the Rig Veda (see below).]

[Footnote 13: Compare Kuhn, _Herabkunft des Feuers und des Gottertrankes_ (1859); Bergaigne, _La Religion Vedique_, i.

148 ff.; Haug's _[=A]itareya Br[=a]hmana_, Introduction, p.

62; Whitney in _Jour. Am. Or. Soc_. III. 299; Muir, _Original Sanskrit Texts_, vol. V. p. 258 ff., where other literature is cited.]

[Footnote 14: RV. X. 34. 1; IX. 98. 9; 82.3. The Vedic plant is unknown (not the _sarcostemma viminale_).]

[Footnote 15: RV. III. 43. 7; IV. 26.6 (other references in Muir, _loc. cit._ p. 262.) Perhaps rain as _soma_ released by lightning as a hawk (Bloomfield).]

[Footnote 16: See the pa.s.sages cited in Muir, _loc. cit_.]

[Footnote 17: A complete account of _soma_ was given by the Vedic texts will be found in Hillebrandt's _Vedische Mythologie_, vol. I., where are described the different ways of fermenting the juice of the plant.]

[Footnote 18: Although so interpreted by Hillebrandt, _loc.

cit._ p. 312. The pa.s.sage is found in RV. VI. 44. 23.]

[Footnote 19: _Loc. cit._ pp. 340, 450.]

[Footnote 20: Compare IX. 79. 5, where the same verb is used of striking, urging out the _soma_-juice, _r[=a]sa_.]

[Footnote 21: Compare IX. 32. 2, where "Trita's maidens urge on the golden steed with the press-stones, _indu_ as a drink for Indra."]

[Footnote 22: On account of the position and content of this hymn, Hillebrandt regards it as addressed to Soma-Brihaspati.]

[Footnote 23: So the sun in I. 163. 9, II. 'Sharpening his horns' is used of fire in i. 140. 6; v. 2. 9.]

[Footnote 24: VI. 16. 39; vii. 19. I; VIII. 60. 13.]

[Footnote 25 3: IX. 63. 8-9; 5. 9. Soma is identified with lightning in ix. 47. 3.]

[Footnote 26: _Hukhratus, verethrajao, hvaresa_.]

[Footnote 27: Or: wise.]

[Footnote 28 3: Or: strength. Above, 'shared riches,'

perhaps, for 'got happiness.']

[Footnote 29: Or: thine, indeed, are the laws of King Varuna.]

[Footnote 30: Or: brilliant and beloved as Mitra (Mitra means friend); Aryaman is translated 'bosom-friend'--both are [=A]dityas.]

[Footnote 31: Or: an thou willest for us to live we shall not die.]

[Footnote 32: Or: lordly plant, but not the moon.]

[Footnote 33: Some unessential verses in the above metre are here omitted.]

[Footnote 34: Or: s.h.i.+ning.]

[Footnote 35: The same ideas are prominent in viii. 48, where Soma is invoked as '_soma_ that has been drunk,'

_i.e.,_ the juice of the ('three days fermented') plant.]

[Footnote 36: In the fourth book, iv. 27. 3. On this myth, with its reasonable explanation as deduced from the ritual, see Bloomfield, JAOS. xvi. I ff. Compare also Muir and Hillebrandt, loc. cit.]

CHAPTER VI.

THE RIG VEDA (CONCLUDED).--YAMA AND OTHER G.o.dS, VEDIC PANTHEISM, ESCHATOLOGY.

In the last chapter we have traced the character of two great G.o.ds of earth, the altar-fire and the personified kind of beer which was the Vedic poets' chief drink till the end of this period. With the discovery of _sur[=a], humor ex hordeo_ (oryzaque; Weber, _V[=a]j.a.peya_, p. 19), and the difficulty of obtaining the original _soma_-plant (for the plant used later for _soma_, the _asclepias acida_, or _sarcostemma viminale_, does not grow in the Punj[=a]b region, and cannot have been the original _soma_), the status of _soma_ became changed. While _sur[=a]_ became the drink of the people, _soma_, despite the fact that it was not now so agreeable a liquor, became reserved, from its old a.s.sociations, as the priests' (G.o.ds') drink, a sacrosanct beverage, not for the vulgar, and not esteemed by the priest, except as it kept up the rite.

It has been shown that these G.o.ds, earthly in habitation, absorbed the powers of the older and physically higher divinities. The ideas that cl.u.s.tered about the latter were transferred to the former. The altar-fire, Agni, is at once earth-fire, lightning, and sun. The drink _soma_ is identified with the heavenly drink that refreshes the earth, and from its color is taken at last to be the terrestrial form of its aqueous prototype, the moon, which is not only yellow, but even goes through cloud-meshes just as _soma_ goes through the sieve, with all the other points of comparison that priestly ingenuity can devise.

Of different sort altogether from these G.o.ds is the ancient Indo-Iranian figure that now claims attention. The older religion had at least one object of devotion very difficult to reduce to terms of a nature-religion.

YAMA

Exactly as the Hindu had a half-divine ancestor, Manu, who by the later priests is regarded as of solar origin, while more probably he is only the abstract Adam (man), the progenitor of the race; so in Yama the Hindu saw the primitive "first of mortals." While, however, Mitra, Dyaus, and other older nature-G.o.ds, pa.s.s into a state of negative or almost forgotten activity, Yama, even in the later epic period, still remains a potent sovereign--the king of the dead.