Topic: Indian Mythology

[Prometheus]

https://archive.org/details/mythologyofallra06gray/page/n19

PLATE I

DURGA

The wife of Siva, in her dread aspect, slays the
Asura Mahisa. Standing in an attitude of triumph on
the demon, who, as his name implies, is in the shape
of a buffalo, she drags his soul (symbolized in human
form) from him. From a Javanese lava sculpture,
probably from Prambanan, in the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston. See p. ii8.



THE MYTHOLOGY
OF ALL RACES

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES
LOUIS HERBERT GRAY, A.M., PH.D., Editor

GEORGE FOOT MOORE, A.M., D.D., LL.D., Consulting Editor



INDIAN



BY

A. BERRIEDALE KEITH

D.C.L., D.LiTT.



BY



ALBERT J. CARNOY



Ph.D., Litt.D.



VOLUME VI




BOSTON

MARSHALL JONES COMPANY

M DCCCC XVII



THE ^-iW VOIJ.K
Asros, LfiNoS: A>n)



Copyright, 1917
By Marshall Jones Company



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London



All rights reserved



Printed in January, 1917



PRIKTED IN TEIE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

BOUND BY THE BOSTON BOOKBINDING COMPANY



CONTENTS

INDIAN

Author's Preface 5

Transcription and Pronunciation 9

Introduction . 11

Chapter I. The Rgveda — Gods of Sky and Air .... 15
II. The Rgveda — Gods of Earth, Demons, and

Dead 41

III. The Mythology of the Brahmanas .... 73

IV. The Great Gods of the Epic 103

V. Minor Epic Deities and the Dead .... 131

VI. The Mythology of the Puranas 162

VII. Buddhist Mythology in India and Tibet ... 187

VIII. The Mythology of the Jains 220

IX, The Mythology of Modern Hinduism . . . 230

IRANIAN

Author's Preface 253

Transcription and Pronunciation 257

Introduction •. 259

Chapter I. Wars of Gods and Demons 263

II. Myths of Creation 275

III. The Primeval Heroes 293

IV. Legends of Yima 304

V. Traditions OF THE Kings AND Zoroaster . . . 320
• VI. The Life to Come 344

VII. Conclusion 348

Notes, Indian ^SS

Notes, Iranian 360

Bibliography, Indian 371

Bibliography, Iranian 395

V



ILLUSTRATIONS

FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

I Durga — Photogravure Frontispiece

II Idol Car 22

III Surya . 26

IV Indra — Coloured 34

V Apsarases — Coloured 60

VI Brahma — Coloured 78

VII Kala-Siva 82

VIII A. Tortures of Hell 100

B. Tortures of Hell 100

IX Trimurti 108

X Marriage of Siva and Parvati 118

XI Birth of Brahma — Coloured 120

XII Varahavatara 122

XIII Laksmi — Coloured 124

XIV Krsna 126

XV Hanuman 128

XVI Garuda 140

XVII Vasuki 154

XVIII Yaksi 156

XIX Kubera 158

XX Visnu Slays the Demons — Coloured 164

XXI Laksmi 170

XXII Ganesa 182

XXIII The Great Buddha — Coloured 188

XXIV The Buddha and Sujata — Coloured 190

XXV The Buddha on the Lotus 192

XXVI Temptation of the Buddha — Coloured 196



viii ILLUSTRATIONS

PLATE FACING PAGE

XXVII Avalokitesvara 202

XXVIII Tirthakara 220

XXIX DilwSra Temple •. 226

XXX Shrine of Bhiimiya 234

XXXI Bhairon 238

XXXII Iranian Deities on Indo-Scythian Coins 260

1. Mithra

2. Apam Napat

3. Mah

4. Vata or Vayu

5. Khvarenanh

6. Atar

7. Vanainti (Uparatat)

8. Verethraghna

XXXIII I. Typical Representation of Mithra 264

2. Scenes from the Life of Alithra

XXXIV Iranian Deities on Indo-Scythian and Sassanian

|, Coins 272

^ I. Tishtrya

2. Khshathra Vairya

"" ., 3. Ardokhsho

'^ 4. Asha Vahishta

5. Ahura Mazda

6. Fire Altar

7. Fire Altar

8. Fravashi

XXXV Ancient Fire Temple near Isfahan 284

XXXVI I. Mithra Born from the Rock 288

2. Alithra Born from the Rock

XXXVII The Simurgh — Coloured 290

XXXVIII Tahmurath Combats the Demons — Coloured . . 302

XXXIX I. Dahhak (Azhi Dahaka) — Coloured 310

2. Jamshid on His Throne — Coloured

XL Rustam and the White Demon — Coloured ... 328

XLI The Death of Suhrab — Coloured 332

XLII Kai Kaus Attempts to Fly to Heaven — Coloured 336



ILLUSTR.\TIOXS

PLATE

XLIII Gushtasp Kills a Dragon — Coloured . . .
XLIV Sculpture Supposed to Represent Zoroaster



IX
FACING PAGE



340
342



ILLUSTRATIONS IX THE TEXT

FIGURE PAGE

1 Agni 42

2 The Churning of the Ocean 104

3 The Propitiation of Uma, or Devi 117

4 The Narasirhha ("Man-Lion") Avatar of Visnu .... 123

5 The Matsya ("Fish") Avatar of Visnu 167



INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

BY
A. BERRIEDALE KEITH, D.C.L., D.Lirr.

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF SANSCRIT AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY
EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY



TO THE MEMORY

OF

Field Marshal The Right Honourable
EARL KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM

K.G., K.P., O.M., G.C.B., G.C.S.I., G.C.M.G., G.C.I.E., LL.D.

LORD RECTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

(19I4-I916)



AUTHOR'S PREFACE

THE mythology of India claims unique interest by virtue
of its unparalleled length of life. It is true that not even
the discoveries at Boghaz Kyoi render it prudent for us to
place the Rgveda at an earlier period than 1500 B.C., and in
part at least that collection may come from three centuries
later, so that as contrasted with the dates of Egyptian and
Babylonian records the earliest monument of Aryan mythology
is comparatively recent. In mass of content and in value for
mythology, however, these cannot compare with the Rgveda.
Of still more importance is the fact that from the period of the
J^gveda to the present day, a space of some thirty-five hundred
years, we have a mythology which is in constant but organic
development. The high mythic systems of Teuton, Celt, and
Slav, of Greek and Roman, have perished before the onslaught
of a loftier faith and survive in little else than folk-lore. In
India, on the contrary, though foreign invasion has often swept
over the north-west of the land, though Islam has annexed
souls as well as territories, though Christianity (especially in
the south) has contributed elements to the faith of the people,
still it remains true that the religion and the mythology of the
land are genuinely their own and for this reason have in them-
selves the constant potency of fresh growth. Moreover, amidst
the ceaseless change which is the heritage of human things,
there is relative stability in the simpler thoughts of the human
mind, and as in many parts of India the peasant still labours
with the implements and in the mode of his ancestors in periods
far remote, so his mind frames the same hypotheses to account
for those phenomena of nature which in India more than else-
where determine irrevocably his weal or his woe.



6 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The rich variety of the mythology, despite its attraction for
the student of the history of myths, renders the task of concise
exposition one of pecuUar difficulty. For the mythology of the
present day available material is enormous: each part of the
vast area of India has its own abundant store of myth and
tradition, and to give detail for this period would be impossible.
The same consideration applies with but slightly lessened force
for the earlier epochs: the Veda, the epics, the Purdnas, the
literature of the Buddhists and of the Jains, each present data
in lavish abundance. It has been necessary, therefore, to cir-
cumscribe narrowly the scope of the subject by restricting the
treatment to that mythology which stands in close connexion
with religion and which conveys to us a conception of the
manner in which the Indian pictured to himself the origin of
the world and of life, the destiny of the universe and of the
souls of man, the gods and the evil spirits who supported or
menaced his existence. Gods and demons were very present
to the mind of the Indian then as they are today, and they are
inextricably involved in innumerable stories of folk-lore, of
fairy tale, and of speculation as to the origin of institutions and
customs. The task of selecting such myths as will best illustrate
the nature of the powers of good and evil is one in which we
cannot hope for complete success; and the problem is rendered
still more hard by the essential vagueness of many of the
figures of Indian mythology: the mysticism of Indian concep-
tion tends ever to a pantheism alien to the clear-cut creations
of the Hellenic imagination.

The difficult task of selecting suitable illustrations has been
shared with the editor of this series. Dr. Louis H, Gray, of
whose valuable assistance in this and other matters I desire
to express my most sincere appreciation; and my friend Pro-
fessor Charles R. Lanman, of Harvard University, has gener-
ously lent us valuable volumes from his private library. Dr.
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, with his wonted generosity and
devotion to the cause of promoting the knowledge of Indian



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 7

art, not merely accorded permission for the reproduction of
illustrations from his Rajput Paintings (published by the Oxford
University Press), but placed at my disposal the resources of
his admirable Visvakarma^ a kindness for which I am deeply
grateful. To the India Society and the Oxford University
Press I am indebted for permission to reproduce illustrations
from Lady Herringham's splendid copies of the Ajanta frescoes,
published by the Press for the Society, Messrs. W. Griggs and
Sons, of Hanover Street, Peckham, London, S. E., have been
good enough to permit the reproduction of certain illustrations
from their Journal of Indian Art; and I owe to the generosity
of the India Office the photographs which Messrs. Griggs and
Sons have made for me from negatives In the collection of
that Department. Lieut.-Col. A. H. Milne, of Cults, Aber-
deenshire, Scotland, kindly permitted the photographing of
one of the pieces of his rich collection; the Museum of Fine
Arts in Boston and the Peabody Museum in Salem, Mass.,
have been no less generous than he; and Mrs. Louis H. Gray
placed her expert knowledge at our service In seeing the vol-
ume through the press.

To my wife I owe thanks for help and criticism.

A. BERRIEDALE KEITH.

University of Edinburgh,
22 September, 19 16.



TRANSCRIPTION AND PRONUNCIATION

THE system of transcription followed is that used by the
Royal Asiatic Society and accords closely with the one
adopted in the Grundriss der indo-arischen Philologie und
Altertumskuiide. The pronunciation is much as in English, but
c is pronounced as ch, and g is always hard; the characters repre-
sented by kh, gh, ch, jh, th, dh, th, dh, ph, bh have the h sounded
half-separately, somewhat as in pot-hook, madhouse, hap-
hazard, etc. Of the letters distinguished by diacritical marks
t, th, d, dh, and n are pronounced very much like the ordinary
dentals; s is sounded as sh, and i as sh or s; the s is always hard,
never soft like z. The letter r denotes the vowel sound of r and
is pronounced approximately like ri; and similarly / is almost
like li. The letters n and n denote a nasal assimilated to the
following sound, guttural and palatal respectively, and m
indicates a nasal sound which corresponds very roughly to ng.
The "visarga," h, was probably pronounced like the Scottish
or German ch. The vowels e (pronounced like a in fate) and o,
which represent an original ai and au, are always long. The
vowel a is pronounced somewhat in the manner of the u in
English hut; other vowels have the same value as in Italian.



INTRODUCTION

THE earliest record of Indian mythology is contained in the
^gveda, or "Hymn Veda," a series of ten books of hymns
celebrating the chief Vedic gods. The exact motives of the
collection are uncertain, but it is clear that in large measure
the hymns represent those used in the Soma sacrifice, which
formed a most important part of the worship of the gods in
the ritual of the subsequent period. It is now recognized that
the religion and mythology contained in this collection are not
primitive in character and that they represent the result of a
long period of development of sacred poetry. Thus it is that
the gods who form the subject of this poetry often appear ob-
scure in character, though in the great majority of cases it is
clear that the myths related of them refer to physical happen-
ings. The date of the Rgveda is much disputed and admits of
no definite determination; it may be doubted whether the old-
est poetry contained in it is much earlier than 1200 B.C., but it
is not probable that it was composed later than 800 B.C., even
in its most recent portions.

Both in its mythology and in its composition the Rgveda
is clearly older than the other three Vedas, the Sdmaveda, the
Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda — the "Chant Veda," the
"Formula Veda," and the "Veda of the Atharvan Priests" —
and, in point of date, these three stand much on a level with
the Brdhmanas, or explanatory prose texts which are attached
to or form part of them. In them are to be found many specu-
lations of a more advanced kind than those of the Rgveda^ yet
at the same time the Atharvaveda contains a mass of popular
religion which has been taken up and worked over by the same
priestly classes to whose activity the other texts are due. It



12 INTRODUCTION

must, therefore, be recognized that the Rgveda gives only an
Imperfect Impression of Indian mythology and that. In a sense,
It is the work of an aristocracy; but at the same time it is im-
possible to regard the Atharvaveda as a direct complement of
the Rgveda and as giving the popular side of the Rgvedic reli-
gion. The Atharvaveda was probably not reduced to Its present
form much, If at all, earlier than 500 B.C., and the popular
worship included in it is one which Is at once separated by a
considerable period In time from that of the Rgveda and is pre-
sented to us, not In Its primitive form, but as It was taken up
by the priests. The other Vedas and the Brdhmanas may be
referred roughly to a period which runs from 800 to 600 B.C.
To the Brdhmanas are attached, more or less closely, treatises
called Aranyakas ("Silvan"), which were to be studied by
oral tradition in the solitude of the forests, and Upanisads,
treatises of definitely philosophical content, whose name is de-
rived from the "session" of the pupils around their teacher.
The oldest of these works probably date from before 500 B.C.
On the other hand, the Sutras, or rules regarding the sacrifice
both In Its more elaborate and In Its more domestic forms, and
regulations concerning custom and law give Incidental infor-
mation as to the more popular side of religion.

The Sutras, at any rate, and possibly even the Brdhmanas,
in their later portions, are contemporaneous with the begin-
nings of the two great epics of India, the Mahdbhdrata and the
Rdmdyana. The first composition of these works as real epics,
made up from ballads and other material, may be assigned to
the fourth century b.c, and It Is probable that the Rdmdyana
was practically complete before the Christian era. In the case
of the Mahdbhdrata, however, there is no doubt that the orig-
inal heroic epic has been overwhelmed by a vast mass of relig-
ious, philosophical, and didactic matter, and that it was not
practically complete before the sixth century a.d., though
most of it probably may be dated In the period from 200 B.C. to
200 A.D. These works reveal, to an extent which cannot be



INTRODUCTION 13

paralleled in the texts of the preceding periods, the religion of
the warrior class and of the people generally. It cannot be as-
sumed that the religion thus described is a later development,
in point of time, than the Vedic religion, so far as the chief
features of this religion are concerned; but much of the myth-
ology is clearly a working over of the tales reported in the
period of the Brdhmanas, of which, in so far, the epic period is a
legitimate successor.

The epic period is followed by that of the Purdnas, which
show undoubted signs of the development of the religion and
mythology of the epics. No doubt the material in these texts
is often old, and here and there narratives are preserved in a
form anterior to that now seen in the Mahdbhdrata. Yet, on
the whole, it is probable that no Purdna antedates 600 a.d.,
and there is little doubt that portions of some of them are much
later, falling within the last few centuries. Nor, indeed, is there
any definite check to the continuance of this literature: at
least two of the Purdnas have no definite texts, and any author,
without fear of positive contradiction, is at liberty to compose
a poem in honour of a place of worship or of pilgrimage, and
to call it a portion of either of these Purdnas. This is the
literature which, to the present day, contains the authorita-
tive sacred texts of Hindu myth and worship. Yet it is essen-
tially priestly and learned, and the popular religion which it
embodies has been elaborated and confused, so that it is neces-
sary, for a clear view of modern Hindu mythology, to supple-
ment the account of the Purdnas with records taken from the
actual observation of the practices of modern India.

Besides the main stream of Hindu mythology there are im-
portant currents in the traditions of the Buddhists and the
Jains. Buddhism has left but faint traces of its former glories
in India itself; undoubtedly from about 500 B.C. to 700 a.d.
it must be ranked among the greatest of Indian religions,
and in the school of the Mahayana, or "Great Vehicle," it de-
veloped an elaborate mythology which displays marked orig-



14 INTRODUCTION

inal features. In comparison with Buddhism Jainism has added
little to the mythology of India, but in its own way it has de-
veloped many themes of Indian mythology, with the main
doctrines of which it remains in much closer contact than does
Buddhism.

The subject, therefore, divides itself, in accordance with the
literary sources upon which any treatment must be based, into
seven divisions:

I. The Period of the Ilgveda (Chapters I and II) ;
II. The Period of the Brdhmanas (Chapter III) ;

III. The Period of the Epics (Chapters IV and V);

IV. The Period of the Purdnas (Chapter VI) ;

V. The Mythology of Buddhism (Chapter VII) ;
VI. The Mythology of Jainism (Chapter VIII);
VII. The Mythology of Modern India (Chapter IX).

[Prometheus]

INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

CHAPTER I
THE RGVEDA

GODS OF SKY AND AIR

IN his Nirukta (the oldest extant Vedic commentary, written
about 500 B.C.) Yaska tells us that earlier students of the
mythology of the Rgveda had resolved all the deities into three
classes according to their position in the sky, in the atmosphere,
or on the earth; and he further treats all the different mem-
bers of each class as being only divergent aspects of the three
great gods, Agni ("Fire") on earth, Indra ("Storm") or Vayu
("Wind") in the atmosphere, and Surya ("Sun") in the sky.
This apportionment of the universe is, in fact, widely accepted
in the Rgveda, where, as a rule, a threefold distribution is pre-
ferred to the simpler view which contrasts the earth with all
that is seen above it. To the division immediately over the
earth are referred the manifestations of wind, rain, and light-
ning, while solar phenomena are assigned to the highest of the
three parts. Each of these three classifications may again be
subdivided into three: thus it is in the highest luminous space
or sky that the "fathers" (the kindly dead), the gods, and
Soma reside. In the atmosphere also there are three spaces, or
often only two — one the heavenly and one the earthly — and
in either case the highest is sometimes treated as if it were the
heaven or sky itself. Like the earth it has rocks and mountains;
streams (clouds) flow in it; and the water-dripping clouds are
constantly compared to and identified with cows. It seems
clear that the earthly as well as the heavenly portion of the



i6 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

atmosphere is above, not below, the earth, so that the sun does
not return from west to east under the earth, but goes back
by the way it came, turning its light side up to the sky and
thus leaving earth in darkness. The earth, conceived as ex-
tended, broad, and boundless, is compared in shape to a wheel,
but no ocean surrounds it, as in Greek and later Indian myth-
ology. The earth has four points, or five when we include the
place where the speaker stands.

An older conception is that of the earth and the sky alone as
constituting the universe. In that case the idea of the shape of
the earth varies, for when it is united with the sky, it is com-
pared to two great bowls turned toward each other; while from
another point of view earth and sky are likened to the wheels
at the ends of an axle. So closely united are the pair that, as a
deity, Dyavaprthivl ("Sky and Earth") is far more frequently
invoked than either Dyaus ("Sky") or Prthivl ("Earth").
The joint deity can claim six hymns in the Rgveda, the Earth
only one, and the Sky none. Even in her solitary hymn (v. 84)
the Earth is praised for sending the rain from her cloud, though
that is, as a matter of fact, her husband's function. The two
are called the primeval parents, who make and sustain all crea-
tures; and the gods themselves are their children: they are the
parents of Brhaspati ("Lord of Devotion") and with the waters
and Tvastr ("Fashioner") they engendered Agni. Yet with
characteristic Impartiality they are said themselves to be
created, for a poet marvels at the skill which wrought them,
and others attribute their fashioning to Indra, to Visvakarman
("All-Maker") or to Tvastr. They are far-extending, unaging,
yielding milk, ghee (clarified butter), and honey in abundance.
The one is a prolific bull, the other a variegated cow; and both
are rich in seed. They are wise also, and they promote right-
eousness and accord protection and aid to their worshippers.

The constant problem of the fashioning of the world is ex-
pressed in many ways. With the suns Varuna measures the
WQrld; Indra made the wide expanse of earth and the high



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 17

dome of the sky after measuring the six regions; or, again, the
earth is said to have been spread out, as by Agni, Indra, the
Maruts (storm-deities), and other gods. The similitude of a
house leads to the question from what wood it was fashioned,
and the doors of this house of the world are the portals of the
east, through which comes the morning light. Both sky and
earth are often said to be propped up, but the sky is also de-
clared to be rafterless, and the marvel of its being unsupported
is remarked. The earth is made fast with bands by Savitr (a
form of the sun), and Visnu fixed it with pegs. In the last and
latest book of the Rgveda, however, these simple concepts are
replaced by speculations in which mythology passes into phi-
losophy. The most important of these theorizings is that
contained in x. 129, which tells that nothing existed in the be-
ginning, all being void. Darkness and space enveloped the
undifferentiated waters. By heat the first existing thing came
into being, whereupon arose desire, the first seed of mind, to
be the bond of the existent and the non-existent. Thus the gods
had their origin, but at this point the speculation concludes
with an assertion of doubt. The hymn itself runs thus, in Muir's
metrical rendering:

"Then there was neither Aught nor Nought, no air nor sky beyond.

What covered all? Where rested all? In watery gulf profound?

Nor death was then, nor deathlessness, nor change of night and day.

That One breathed calmly, self-sustained; nought else beyond It lay.

Gloom hid in gloom existed first — one sea, eluding view.

That One, a void In chaos wrapt, by inward fervour grew.

Within It first arose desire, the primal germ of mind.

Which nothing with existence links, as sages searching find.

The kindling ray that shot across the dark and drear abyss, —

Was it beneath? or high aloft? What bard can answer this?

There fecundating powers were found, and mighty forces strove, —

A self-supporting mass beneath, and energy above.

Who knows, who ever told, from whence this vast creation rose?

No gods had then been bom, — who then can e'er the truth disclose?

Whence sprang this world, and whether framed by hand divine or

no, —
It's lord in heaven alone can tell, if even he can show."



i8 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

As in this hymn the gods are said to come into being after the
creation of the universe, so in other philosophic hymns they are
brought into existence from the waters, and in one place they
are divided into groups born from Aditi ("Boundless"), the
waters, and the earth. The Adityas in particular are constantly
derived from Aditi. Yet speculation is free and changes easily:
Dawn is the mother of the sun and is born of Night, by reason
of temporal sequence; while for local causes Sky and Earth are
the all-parents. Or the greatest of a class is parent of the rest,
as the storm-god Rudra ("Roarer") of the Rudras, the wind
of the storm-gods, Sarasvati of rivers, and Soma of plants.
A certain mysticism and love of paradox result in a declaration
that Indra produced his parents, Sky and Earth, or that Daksa
(a creator-god) is at once father and son of Aditi. Similar
vagueness prevails regarding men. They must be included in
the general parentage of Sky and Earth, but the priestly family
of the Angirases are sprung directly from Agni, and the sage
Vasistha is the child of Mitra and Varuna by UrvasI, an
Apsaras, or heavenly nymph. Yet they are also descended
from Manu, son of Vivasvant, or from Yama, the brother of
Manu, and his sister Yami, and this pair claim kinship with the
Gandharva (celestial bard) and the water-nymph.

There is too little distinction between gods and men for us
to be surprised that the gods were once mere mortals, or that
there are ancient as well as more recent gods. How they won
immortality is uncertain: Savitr or Agni bestowed it upon
them, or they obtained it by drinking soma, whereas Indra
gained it by his ascetic practices. Yet it seems clear that they
did get it and that when the gods are called unaging, it does
not mean, as in the mythology of the epic, that they endure
only for a cosmic age; for this latter concept is bound up
with the philosophy which sees no progress in the world and
which, therefore, resolves all existence into a perpetual series of
growth and passing away.

Many as are the names of the gods, there Is much that they



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 19

have in common as they are presented to us In a poetry which
has gone so far as to recognize an essential unity among the
multiplicity of the divine forms. "The bird — that is, the sun
— which is but one, priest and poets with words make into
many," we are told, and "Priests speak in diverse ways of that
which is but one: they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan." Yet
this is not so much monotheism as pantheism, for we learn
that Aditi is everything, gods and men, that which has been
and that which shall be; and that Prajapati ("Lord of Crea-
tures") embraces all things within himself. From this point of
view it is easy to understand the fact ^ that here and there one
god is treated as if he were the highest god, or that one god can
be identified with any of the others, and all the others be said to
be centred in him. There is no real monotheistic strain in a
declaration that "Agni alone, like Varuna, is lord of wealth."
The same syncretism is seen in the constant addressing of
prayers to groups of gods, In the stereotyping of the invocation
of the gods in pairs, and in the reckoning of the gods as thirty-
three, i.e. three sets of eleven each in the sky, the waters of the
air, and the earth.

Normally, and subject to certain exceptions, the gods are
conceived as anthropomorphic; they wear garments, carry
weapons, and drive in cars. Yet their personality is very differ-
ently developed in the several cases: Indra Is much more an-
thropomorphic than Agni, whose tongue and whose limbs merely
denote his flames. The abode of the gods Is In the highest realm
of sky, and the offerings of men are either carried thither to them
by Agni or, in a concept which is perhaps older, they are deemed
to come to the straw on which the pious worshipper has set out
his gifts. The food which they eat Is that of man — milk, bar-
ley, butter, cattle, sheep, and goats — chosen now and then for
special fitness, as when Indra, often called a bull, receives heca-
tombs of bulls. The drink of the gods is the soma.

Of feuds among the gods we hear little or nothing: Indra
alone reveals traits of disorderliness, perhaps not unnatural In



20 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

one who boasts of having drunk himself into intoxication with
soma. He seems once to have fought with all the gods, to have
shattered the car of Dawn, and even to have slain his father;
and he actually quarrelled with his faithful henchmen, the
Maruts. To their worshippers the gods are good and kind, and
for them they slay the demons, with whom they wage a war
which is triumphant if seemingly incessant. They richly bless
the sacrificer and punish the niggard. They are true and not
deceitful, although Indra again departs from the highest stand-
ard by his use of wiles, even without a good end to justify
the means. Moral grandeur is practically confined to Varuna,
and the greatness and the might of the gods are extolled far
more often than their goodness. Their power over men is un-
limited: none may defy their ordinances or live beyond the
period allotted by them, nor is there aught that can subdue
them, save in so far as they are said sometimes not to be able to
transgress the moral order of Mitra and Varuna.

The pantheon which the J^gveda presents is essentially arti-
ficial, for as regards by far the greater part of the collection it
contains hymns used in the Soma ritual, whence it gives only
an imperfect conception of the gods as a whole. Thus, except-
ing in the tenth book, which contains a short group of hymns
(14-18) constituting a sort of collection for Yama (the prime-
val man and the king of the departed), we learn nothing of
the dead and very little of the spirits. Moreover, It is only in
quite Inadequate measure that we meet with the more domestic
side of religion or with the belief in magic and witchcraft in
their application to the needs of ordinary life. We cannot,
therefore, feel any assurance that the comparative importance
of the gods as they might be judged from their prominence in
the Rgveda affords any real criterion of their actual position in
the life of any Vedic tribe, though doubtless it does reflect
their rank in the views of the group of priestly families whose
traditions, united in a whole, are presented to us in the Rgveda.
From the text Itself it would seem that Indra, Agnl, and Soma



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 21

are by far the greatest gods; then come the Asvins (the twin
celestial "Horsemen"), the Maruts, and Varuna; then Usas
("Dawn"), Savitr, Brhaspati, Surya, Pusan ("Nourisher");
then Vayu, Dyavaprthivl, Visnu, and Rudra; and finally Yama
and Parjanya (the rain-god). Even this list, based on numeri-
cal considerations, is open to objection, for some of the deities,
such as Varuna, are obviously greater, though less closely con-
nected with the sacrifice, so that, despite their true rank, they
are less often mentioned than others, such as the Asvins, who
are more frequently invoked in the sacrifice.

Of the gods of the sky Dyaus ("Sky") corresponds In name
to Zeus, and like Zeus he is a father. Indeed, this is by far the
most important characteristic of Zeus's counterpart in the
Rgveda. Usas ("Dawn") is most often the child mentioned,
but the Asvins, Agnl, Parjanya, Surya, the Adltyas,the Maruts,
Indra, and the Angirases are among his ofi'spring, and he Is the
parent of Agni. Normally, however, he is mentioned with Earth
in the compound Dyavaprthivl, and on the solitary occasion
when he Is hailed In the vocative as Dyaus pitar ("Father Sky,"
the exact equivalent of the Greek ZeO irdrep and the Latin
luppiter), "Mother Earth" Is simultaneously addressed.
Scarcely any other characteristic is ascribed to him; it Is simply
stated that he is a bull who bellows downward, or a black steed
decked with pearls (I.e. the dark sky set with stars), that he
smiles through the clouds, and that he bears the thunderbolt.
Thus he Is hardly anthropomorphized at all, whether named
alone, or when conjoined with earth, and his worship is little
removed from the direct adoration of the sky as a living being.
No moral attribute belongs to him, nor is there any trace of
sovereignty over the world or the other gods. The position of
power and elevation which Greek mythology ascribes to Zeus
is not accorded in full to any Vedic deity, but in so far as Zeus
has a parallel, It Is in Varuna, not In Dyaus.

In comparison with Dyaus Varuna has far more anthropo-
morphic traits. He wears a golden mantle and a shining robe;



22 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

with Mitra ("Sun") he mounts his shining car; in the highest
heaven they abide in a golden mansion, with a thousand pillars
and a thousand doors; and the all-seeing Sun, rising from his
abode, goes to the dwellings of Mitra and Varuna to tell of the
deeds of men; the eye of Mitra and Varuna is the sun, and
Varuna has a thousand eyes. Both gods have fair hands, and
Varuna treads down wiles with shining foot. Yet no myths are
told of him, and the deeds ascribed to him are all intended to
show his power as a ruler. He is lord of all, both gods and men —
not only an independent ruler, a term more often given to Indra,
but a universal ruler, an epithet used also of Indra, though
peculiarly Varuna's. Moreover, the terms Ksatriya ("Ruler")
and Asura ("Deity") are his, the first almost exclusively, and
the second predominantly. As Asura he possesses, in company
with Mitra, the mdyd, or occult power, wherewith they send
the dawns, make the sun to cross the sky, obscure it with cloud
and rain, or cause the heavens to rain. The worlds are sup-
ported by Varuna and Mitra; Varuna made the golden swing
(the sun) to shine in the heaven and placed fire in the waters;
the wind is his breath. He establishes the morning and the
evening; through him the moon moves and the stars shine at
night; he regulates the months of the year. He is only rarely
connected with the sea, for the Rgveda knows little of the ocean,
but his occult power keeps the ever-flowing rivers from filling
it up. Despite this, Varuna and Mitra are greatly concerned
with the waters of the atmosphere and make the rain to fall;
they have kine yielding refreshment and streams flowing with
honey.

So great is Varuna that neither the flying birds nor the flow-
ing rivers can reach the limit of his dominion, his might, and his
wrath. The three heavens and the three earths alike are depos-
ited in him; he knows the flight of the birds in the sky, the path
of the ships, the track of the wind, and all secret things. The
omniscience and omnipotence, no less than the omnipresence,
of Varuna receive admirable expression in a hymn which, by



PLATE II

Idol Car

In the worship of many deities an important occa-
sion is their ceremonial visit to other divinities, and
for this purpose elaborate vehicles are requisite for
their conveyance. This car, whose wheels are of
stone, has been chosen to illustrate the intricacy
of Indian carving in wood. After Architecture of
Dharwar and Mysore^ Photograph L.



THE NEW YORK

PUBLIC LlBKAKr



A«roB, LBNOX AND

HLDlia* FOUNDAnONS
* L



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 23

accident, is preserved only as degraded into a spell in the
Atharvaveda (iv. 16), and thus rendered by Muir:^

"The mighty Lord on high, our deeds, as if at hand, espies:

The gods know all men do, though men would fain their deeds disguise.

Whoever stands, whoever moves, or steals from place to place,

Or hides him in his secret cell, — the gods his movements trace.

Wherever two together plot, and deem they are alone,

King Varuna is there, a third, and all their schemes are known.

This earth is his, to him belong those vast and boundless skies;

Both seas within him rest, and yet in that small pool he lies.

Whoever far beyond the sky should think his way to wing,

He could not there elude the grasp of Varuna the king.

His spies descending from the skies glide all this world around,

Their thousand eyes all-scanning sweep to earth's remotest bound.

Whate'er exists in heaven and earth, whate'er beyond the skies,

Before the eyes of Varuna, the king, unfolded lies.

The ceaseless winkings all he counts of every mortal's eyes:

He wields this universal frame, as gamester throws his dice.

Those knotted nooses which thou fling'st, o god, the bad to snare, —

All liars let them overtake, but all the truthful spare."

[Prometheus]

With Mitra Varuna is a barrier against falsehood, and in one
passage he, together with Indra, is said to bind with bonds not
made of rope. Mitra and Varuna hate, drive away, and punish
falsehood, and they also afflict with disease those who neglect
their worship. On the other hand, Varuna is gracious to the
repentant sinner; like a rope he unties the sin committed and
pardons the faults of the forefathers not less than those of the
children. He is gracious to those who thoughtlessly break his
ordinances. No hymn addressed to him fails to include a prayer
for forgiveness. He can take away or prolong life by his thou-
sand remedies; he is a guardian of immortality, and in the
next world the righteous may hope to see Yama and Varuna.
He is a friend to his worshipper and gazes on him with his
mental eye.

Mention is often made of the ordinances of Varuna, which
even the immortal gods cannot obstruct. Both he and Mitra
are called "Lords of Rta," or "Holy Order," and "Upholders
of l^ta," an epithet which they share with the Adityas or with



24 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

the gods in general. They are also termed "Guardians of Holy
Order," a term used likewise of Agni and Soma, and "Follow-
ers of Holy Order," an epithet given predominantly to Agni.
This "Order" must, therefore, be regarded as something
higher even than Varuna, and it is clearly the Asha of the
Avesta. Its first aspect is cosmic order: the dawns shine in
accordance with B-ta and rise from Ilta's abode; the sun, with
the twelve spokes of his wheel (the months), moves in accord
with 51-ta; it is Rta that gives the white cooked milk to the
red raw cow. The sacrifice is under the guardianship of !Rta;
Agni is the observer of it and is its first-born. Prayers take
effect in accordance with ^^ta, and the pious sacrificer claims
that, discarding witchcraft, he oifers with Ilta. In the sphere
of man Rta is a moral order and, as truth, it stands in perpetual
opposition to untruth. When Agni strives toward Rta, he is
said to become Varuna himself; when Yama and YamI contend
on the question whether incest may be allowed to the first
pair of mankind, it is to Rta that Yama appeals against his
sister's persuasions. The same features mark I^ta in the
Avesta, and the antiquityof the concept may be very great.^ Un-
like the Greek Moira,^ or Fate, we never find Rta coming into
definite conflict with the will or wish of the gods, and the con-
stant opposition of Anrta ("Disorder") shows that the idea is
rather one of norm or ideal than of controlling and overriding
fate. This may be due to the transfer of ^^ta to the moral from the
physical world, or to the fact that, even as applied to the physical
world, full necessity of cause and eff"ect was not accepted.

It is perfectly clear that Varuna corresponds in character
and in the epithet Asura too closely with Ahura Mazda, the
great deity of the Iranians, to be other than in the nearest rela-
tion to him, nor can there be much real doubt that the physical
basis of the god is the broad sky. Mitra is, indeed, so faint a
figure apart from him that it would be difiicult to be certain
that he is the sun, were it not for the undoubted solar nature
of the Persian Mithra.^ Yet if Mitra is the sun, the sky is nat-



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 25

urally the greater deity, and this not only well accounts for the
connexion of Varuna with the waters, which, from the Athar-
vaveda onward, becomes his chief characteristic, but also ac-
cords with the attributes of a universal monarch. Nor is there
anything in the name of the god to render this view doubtful.
It seems to be derived from the root &r, "to cover," and to de-
note the covering sky, and many scholars have maintained that
the name of the Greek deity Ouranos^ can be identified with it.

The antiquity of MItra and Varuna has been carried back to
about 1400 B.C., when their names occur on an Inscription
as gods of the Mitanni in northern Mesopotamia, but whether
they were then Aryan or Iranian or Vedic gods is not clear.^ It
has been suggested, however, that the peculiar character of
Varuna is due, like the character of Ahura Mazda, to borrow-
ing, during the Indo-Iranian period, from a Semitic people, and
that he and MItra and the other Adityas, seven in all corre-
sponding to the Amesha Spentas of Iran,^ were in origin the
moon, the sun, and the five planets. Yet this view does not
accord well with the physical side of Varuna in the Rgveda^ in
which his connexion with night is only slight; the Indians'
knowledge of the five planets Is very doubtful; and the Amesha
Spentas seem purely abstract and Avestan deities. Nor is it
necessary to see in Varuna's spies the stars, or in his bonds the
fetters of night; both are the necessary paraphernalia of an
Indian king, and, when thought of concretely, his fetter seems
to be disease, in special perhaps dropsy.

Indra occurs in the same record of the MItannian gods, and
this shows that even then he must have been a great god. In
the Rgveda there can be no comparison between Varuna
and Indra in moral grandeur, but the latter is far more often
mentioned and is clearly by all odds the more popular god. In-
deed, in one hymn (iv. 42) the claims of the two divinities seem
to be placed before us In their own mouths, Varuna as the
creator and sustainer of the world, and Indra as the irresistible
deity of battle; and the poet seems inclined to recognize the



26 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

pre-eminence of Indra. Yet there is no real evidence, save per-
haps a certain diminution of mention in the tenth book of the
J^gveda, that the worship of Varuna was on the decline in this
period, and the real source of the loss of his greatness is to be
traced to the growth of the conception of the creator god,
Prajapati or Visvakarman, at the end of the period of the
Rgveda and in the following epoch. Driven thus from his high
functions, Varuna became connected with the night and the
waters.

Mitra has but one hymn addressed to him alone (iii. 59), and
in it he is said to bring men together when he utters speech and
to gaze on the tillers with unwinking eye. The characteristics
of assembling men and regulating the course of the sun confirm
the view that, as suggested by the Persian evidence, he is a
solar god. The name is used repeatedly to denote "friend," but
it is not proved that the god is derived from that application of
the term.

Mitra's indefinite character and lack of personality may be
due in part to the co-existence of his rival Surya as the sun-god
par excellence. Siirya is constantly the actual solar element and
is conceived in many forms, as a bird, a flying eagle, a mottled
bull, the gem of the sky, the variegated stone set in the heaven.
He is also the weapon of Mitra and Varuna, or the felloe of their
car, or the car itself. He shines forth in the lap of the dawns
and is the son of Aditi, and his father is Dyaus, even though
many other gods are said to produce the sun. He triumphs
over the darkness and the witches, drives away sickness and
evil dreams, and prolongs life. His evil power as burning heat
is not known to the Rgveda, unless it be hinted at in the myth
that Indra overcame him and stole his wheel, which may point
to the obscuration of the sun by the storm, here possibly re-
garded as tempering its excessive heat, though it is equally
susceptible of the opposite interpretation. In another aspect
Surya is Savitr, the "Impeller" or "Instigator," the golden-
handed, the golden-tongued, with chariot of gold. He it is who



PLATE III

SURYA

As the text-books enjoin, the Sun-God is "clad in
the dress of the Northerners [i.e. Persians], so as to
be covered from the feet upward to the bosom. He
holds two lotuses growing out of his hands, wears
a diadem and a necklace hanging down, has his face
adorned with ear-rings, and a girdle round his waist."
His figure thus suggests Iranian influence, especially
as the sacred girdle was worn by the Magas, who
traced their descent to the Magians of Persia. While
the sun-cult was known in India in the Vedic period,
it received new life from Iran. From a sculpture
at Modhera, Gujarat. After Burgess and Cousens,
The Architectural Antiquities of Northern Gujarat^
Plate LVI, No. 5. See also pp. 138-39, 183-84.






^.fv-^^



,SM^



^0^. ^c^
^o^^






GODS OF SKY AND AIR 27

wins immortality for the gods, length of life for man, and raises
the !^bhus (the divine artificers) to immortality. In the usual
exaggeration of the poet it is declared that Indra, Mitra,
Varuna, Aryaman, and Rudra cannot resist the will and inde-
pendent rule of Surya. He is closely connected with Pusan and
Bhaga, and one verse (III. Ixli. 10),

"May we attain that excellent glory of Savitr the god:
So may he stimulate our prayers," ^

has become the most famous in Vedic literature and is used to
preface all Vedic study. Once he is called Prajapati, "Lord
of Offspring," or of the world; yet it seems undoubted that
he is not a mere abstract god in origin, but the active power
of the sun elevated into a separate deity.

Pusan, the "Nourisher," is also, it would seem, allied in
origin to Savitr. His personality is indistinct: he wears braided
hair (like Rudra) and a beard; and in addition to a spear he
carries an awl or a goad. His car is not drawn by horses, as one
would expect, but by goats; and his food is gruel. His connex-
ion with pastoral life is shown by his epithets. He loses no
cattle, but directs them; he saves and smooths the clothing of
sheep; and he is also the deliverer, the guardian of the way,
who removes the wolf and the robber from the path. Accord-
ingly it is he who conducts the dead to the fathers, just as Agni
and Savitr take them to where the righteous have gone; and he
fares along the path of heaven and earth between the two
abodes. Like Siirya and Agni he woos his mother and his sis-
ter, and receives from the gods the sun-maiden in marriage,
whence in the wedding-rite he is asked to take the hand of the
bride and lead her away and bless her. He is often invoked
with Soma and Indra, but most frequently with Bhaga and
Visnu. He is called glowing and once bears the name Agohya
("Not to be Concealed"), which is elsewhere Savitr's epithet.
He is also the "Prosperer" par excellence and may well repre-
sent the sun in its aspect as beneficent to the flocks and herds



28 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

of men, gracious to them in marriage, and the leader of their
souls in death to the world of the sun and heaven. The Avestan
Mithra has the characteristics of increasing cattle and bringing
them back home.

Yet another form of the sun is Vivasvant, the father of Yama
and of Manu, and thus in a sense the forefather of the human
race. He is identical with the Avestan Vivanghvant, the father
of Yima, who first prepared the haoma,^° and in the Rgveda also
he is connected with the sacrifice. His messenger is Agni or
Matarisvan; in his abode the gods rejoice; and Soma, Indra,
and the Asvins are his close companions; yet his nature must
have had a dread trait, for a worshipper prays that the arrow
of Vivasvant may not smite him before old age. He shines out
at the beginning of the dawn as Agni, nor is it improbable that
he is no more than the rising sun. His character as sacrificer,
which is not as prominent in the Rgveda as in the Avesta, can
easily have been a special development, while, if he was no more
in origin than the first of sacrificers like Manu in the Rgveda,
his celestial character becomes difficult to explain.

Much more faint are the figures of Bhaga ("Bountiful"),
Amsa ("Apportioner"), Aryaman ("Comrade"), and Daksa
("Skilful"), who with Mitra and Varuna are hailed in one
hymn (II. xxvii. i) as the Adityas. Aryaman is a faint double
of Mitra, but is the wooer of maidens. Arhsa is practically a
mere name, but is called bountiful. Bhaga is the giver of wealth
whom men desire to share, and Dawn is his sister. In the Avesta
his name is Bagha, an epithet of Ahura Mazda, and it corre-
sponds to the Old Church Slavonic word hogil, "god." Dak§a
is born of Aditi, although he is also her father. His existence
is probably due to the fact that the Adityas are called "having
intelligence" for their father, thus giving rise to the concep-
tion that Daksa is a person.

The Adityas, however, are a group of uncertain number and
sense. Once only in the Rgveda are they said to be seven, and
once eight, the eighth being Martanda, the setting sun, whom



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 29

Aditi throws away and then brings back to the gods. Mitra,
Varuna, and Indra are called Adityas, and the same name is
given to Savitr and to Siarya. Sometimes the Adityas form a
group in conjunction with other gods like the Maruts, Rudras,
Vasus, and Rbhus, or again they seem occasionally to include
all the gods. From Varuna they appear to have derived the
moral duties of punishing sin and rewarding the good; they
spread fetters for their enemies, but protect their worshippers
as birds spread their wings over their young. They are bright,
golden, many-eyed, unwinking, and sleepless, kings with in-
violable ordinances, pure, and overseers of Holy Order.

In comparison with his future greatness Visnu appears of
slight importance in the Rgveda, in which only five hymns and
part of a sixth are given to him. His great feat is his triple
stride, the third of which places him beyond the ken of man or
the flight of birds. Yet it is also described as an eye fixed in
heaven, where there is a well of honey, where Indra dwells, and
where are the many cows desired of the worshipper. In his strid-
ing Visnu moves swiftly but also according to law; he is an
ordainer who, like Savitr, metes out the earthly spaces; or,
again, he sets in motion, like a revolving wheel, his ninety steeds
with their four names, who can be nothing else than the year.
These traits reveal him beyond doubt as a sun-god, whether
his name be explained as "the Active," from the root vis, or as
"One Who Crosses the Backs of the Universe."" His three
strides were interpreted by Aurnavabha, one of the earliest
expounders of Vedic mythology, as the rising, culminating, and
setting of the sun, but Sakapuni, another exegete, already gave
the far more probable version of earth, atmosphere, and sky.

The steps taken by Vi§nu are for man in distress, or to be-
stow on him the earth as a dwelling-place, or to make room for
existence, and in this conception lies, no doubt, the germ of the
dwarf incarnation of Visnu. His closeness to man is also attested
by his connexion with Indra and the Maruts. Urged by Indra,
Visnu, having drunk of the soma, carried off one hundred buffa-



30 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

loes and a brew of milk belonging to the boar (i.e. Vrtra), while
Indra, shooting across the cloud-mountain, slew the fierce boar.
In the period of the Brdhmanas Visnu is conceived as assuming
the form of a boar, and the way for such transformations is
paved by the view of the Rgveda (VII. c. 6) that in battle Visnu
assumes a different shape and has to be asked to reveal his own
form to the worshipper. Though, therefore, not yet in Vedic
circles one of the great gods, his relation to man, his close con-
nexion with the three worlds, and his power of change of form
are traits which explain that in other circles he may have been
a much greater deity.

Among the gods listed in the Mitanni inscription we find the
Nasatyas, thus confirming the early existence of the divine
pair who in the Avesta have degenerated into a demon, Naong-
haithya. Their normal name in the Rgveda is the Asvins
("Horsemen"), though they are also called "the Wonder-
Workers" (Dasra), and later mythology has invented Dasra
and Nasatya as the names of the pair. They are beautiful,
strong, and red and their path is red or golden. They have a
skin filled with honey and touch the sacrifice and the wor-
shipper with their honey-whip. Their chariot alone is described
as honey-hued or honey-bearing, and it also has the peculiarity
of possessing three wheels, three felloes, and all the other parts
triple. The time of the Asvins' appearance is at dawn; they
follow dawn in their car; at the yoking of their car the dawn is
born; but yet, despite this, they are invoked to come to the
ofi"ering not only at the morning but also at noon and at sunset.
Their parentage is not definitely decided: they are children of
Sky or of Ocean, or of Vivasvant and Saranyu, or of Piisan; and
though normally inseparable like the eyes or the hands, never-
theless they are once or twice said to be variously born or born
here and there. They are wedded to a deity described as Surya,
the sun-maiden, or the daughter of the Sun, and it is for her
perhaps that their car has three seats and three wheels. In the
marriage-rite they are accordingly invoked to conduct the bride



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 31

home on their chariot, and they are also asked to make the
young wife fertile, while among their feats is to give a child to
the wife of a eunuch, to cause the barren cow to yield milk, and
to grant a husband to the old maid. Moreover they are physi-
cians who heal diseases, restore sight to the blind, and ward off
death from the sick. The decrepit Cyavana they released from
his worn-out body, prolonged his life, made him young again
and the husband of maidens. By means of their winged ship
they saved Bhujyu, son of Tugra, from the log to which he was
clinging in the midst of the ocean. They rescued and refreshed
Atri, whom demons had bound in a burning pit. At the prayer
of the she- wolf they restored his sight to Rjrasva, whom his
father had blinded for slaying a hundred and one sheep and
giving them to the wolf. They gave a leg of iron to Vispala
when her leg was cut off in battle. They placed a horse's head
on Dadhyanc, who told them in reward where the mead of
Tvastr was; and they rescued Rebha from death, befriended
Ghosa, who was growing old childless in her father's house,
gave Visnapu back to Visvaka, and saved the quail from the
wolf's jaws. Many other names oi proteges are mentioned, and
the deeds recited may have been historical in some cases, while
mythical traits doubtless exist in others.

The Indian interpreters of the early period were at a loss to
decide the nature of the Asvlns, whom they regarded as heaven
and earth, sun and moon, day and night, or even as two kings
who were performers of holy acts. It Is clear that in essence they
are one with the Dloskourol^^ and with the two sons of the Lettic
god who came riding on steeds to woo for themselves the
daughter of the Sun or the Moon and who, like the DIoskouroI,
are rescuers from the ocean. The older identification with sun
and moon has been supported, and they have been regarded
merely as succouring giants who have no mythical basis, but the
more probable view Is either that they represent the twilight
(half dark, half light), or the morning and the evening star. The
latter interpretation offers the grave difficulty of the contrast

[Prometheus]

32 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

between the unity of the Asvins and the diversity of the two
stars, which Is only slenderly diminished by the curious traces
of separate birth and worship in the Rgveda.

There is but one goddess of the celestial world, the maiden
Usas, the most poetical figure in the whole pantheon. Decking
herself In gay attire like a dancer, she displays her bosom, and
like a maiden adorned by her mother she reveals her form.
Clothed in light, she appears in the east and shows her
charms; immortal and unaging, she awakes before the world.
When she shines forth, the birds fly up, and men bestir them-
selves; she removes the black mantle of night and banishes
evil dreams and the hated darkness. She follows ever the path
of Order, though once she is asked not to delay lest the sun
scorch her as a thief or an enemy. She is borne on a car with
ruddy steeds or kine, and the distance which the dawns trav-
erse in a day is thirty yojanas (leagues). She is the wife or the
mistress of the Sun who follows her, but sometimes is also his
mother; she is the sister of Bhaga, the kinswoman of Varuna,
and the mightier sister of Night. She is likewise closely associ-
ated with Agni, as the fire of the sacrifice which is Ht at dawn,
and with the Asvins, whom she is besought to arouse. Her
name denotes "the Shining" and is in origin one with Aurora
and Eos.^^

Of the gods of the atmosphere by far the greatest is Indra,
whose name occurs among the list of MItannian gods. He Is
more anthropomorphic than any other Vedic deity. His head,
his arms, and his hands are mentioned, as is his great belly in
which he puts the soma; he moves his jaws after drinking
soma, and his lips are beautiful. His beard waves in the air,
he has tawny hair and beard. His long, strong, well-shaped
arms wield the thunderbolt, which was fashioned for him by
Tvastr or Usanas. This Is his chief weapon, and it is described
as a stone, as hundred-jointed and thousand-pointed, hundred-
angled, sharp, and metallic; rarely it is said to be of gold.
Occasionally he bears a bow and arrows, hundred-pointed and



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 33

winged with a thousand feathers, and sometimes he carries a
goad. He travels in a golden chariot drawn by two or more
horses, as many as eleven hundred being mentioned. He is a
gigantic eater and drinker; at his birth he drank soma and for
the slaying of Vrtra he drank three lakes or even thirty. He
eats the flesh of twenty or a hundred buffaloes, and when he
was born the worlds quaked with fear. His mother is described,
as a cow and he as a bull; she is also called Nistigri, and he
willed to be born unnaturally through her side. His father is
Dyaus or Tvastr; from the latter he stole the soma and even
slew him and made his mother a widow; more than this he
fought against the gods, perhaps for the soma. His wife In-
dranl is mentioned, and he is often called Sacipati, or "Lord of
Strength," whence later mythology coined a wife SacI for him.
He is closely connected with the Maruts and with Agni, and is
actually identified with Surya.

The might and power of Indra are described everywhere in
terms of hyperbole. He is the greatest of the gods, greater even
than Varuna, lord of all that moves and of men, who won in
battle wide space for the gods. Occasionally he bears Varuna's
title of universal ruler, but more often he has his own of inde-
pendent ruler. The epithet "of a hundred powers" is almost his
alone, and his also is that of "very lord." The deed which wins
him his high place is the feat, ever renewed, of slaying the
dragon which encompasses the waters. He smites him on the
head or on the back, he pierces his vitals. After slaying Vrtra
he lets loose the streams; he shatters the mountains, breaks
open the well, and sets the waters free; he kills the dragon
lying on the waters and releases the waters. He cleaves the
mountain to liberate the cows; he loosens the rock and makes
the kine easy to obtain; he frees the cows which were fast within
the stone; he slays Vrtra, breaks the castles, makes a channel
for the rivers, pierces the mountain, and makes it over to his
friends the cows. Again, however, he wins the light by his deed;
he gains the sun as well as the waters by freeing the demons;



34 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

when he slew the chief of the dragons and released the waters
from the mountain, he generated the sun, the sky, and the
dawn; he finds the light in the darkness and makes the sun to
shine. He also wins the dawns; with the sun and the dawn he
discovers or delivers or wins the cows; the dawns again go
forth to meet Indra when he becomes the lord of the kine.
Moreover he gains the soma and he establishes the quaking
mountains, a feat which the Brdhmanas explain as denoting
that he cut off their wings. He supports the earth and props up
the sky, and is the generator of heaven and earth.

Indra, however, does not war with demons only, for he at-
tacked Usas, shattered her wain with his bolt, and rent her
slow steeds, whereupon she fled in terror from him, this being,
perhaps, a myth of the dawn obscured by a thunder-storm or
of the sunrise hastening the departure of the lingering dawn.
Indra also came into conflict with the sun when he was running
a race with the swift steed Etasa, and in some unexplained way
Indra caused the car of the sun to lose a wheel. He also seems
to have murdered his father Tvastr, and, though the Maruts
aid him in his struggle with Vrtra, in a series of hymns we
find a distinct trace that he quarrelled with them, used
threatening language to them, and was appeased only with
difficulty.

Other foes of Indra's were the Panis, who kept cows hidden
in a cave beyond the Rasa, a mythical stream. Sarama, Indra's
messenger, tracks the kine and demands them In Indra's name,
only to be mocked by the Panis, but Indra shatters the ridge of
Vala and overcomes his antagonists. Elsewhere the cows are
said to be confined by the power of Vala without reference to
the Panis and are won by Indra, often with the help of the
Angirases. Vala ("Encircler") is clearly the name of the
stronghold in which the cows are confined.

As becomes so great a warrior, Indra is a worthy helper to
men on earth. He is the chief aid of the Aryans in their
struggles against the Dasas or Dasyus, and subjects the black



PLATE IV

Indra

The deity appears crowned as king of the gods
and enthroned on his vahana (" vehicle "), the
elephant Airavata. The middle one of his left hands
holds the thunderbolt. He is further characterized
by the multitude of marks on his body, which origi-
nally represented the yoni (possibly because of the
fertility which the rain brings to earth), though later
they were changed into eyes. The heavy beard shows
the Persian influence in the painting. From an oil-
painting of the Indo-Mughal school in the collection
of the Editor. See pp. 32-35.



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 35

race to the Aryan; he leads Turvasa and Yadu over the rivers,
apparently as patron of an Aryan migration. Moreover he as-
sists his favourites against every foe; and his friend Sudas is
aided in his battle with the ten kings, his foes being drowned
in the Parusni. To his worshippers he is a wall of defence, a
father, mother, or brother. He bestows wealth on the pious
man, and, as with a hook a man showers fruit from a tree, so he
can shower wealth on the righteous. He is the lord of riches
and at the same time is "the Bountiful One," whence in later
literature the epithet Maghavan becomes one of his names.
He richly rewarded a maiden who, having found soma beside a
river, pressed it with her teeth and dedicated it to him. Yet he
has few moral traits in his character and is represented as
boasting of his drinking feats. Indeed it is most significant that
we have proof, even in the Vedic period, of men doubting his
existence.

It is almost certain that In Indra we must see a storm-god,
and that his exploit of defeating Vftra Is a picture of the burst-
ing forth of the rain from the clouds at the oncoming of the
rainy season, when all the earth Is parched, and when man and
nature alike are eager for the breaking of the drought. The
tremendous storms which mark the first fall of the rain are
generally recognized as a most fitting source for the conception
of the god, while the mountains cleft and the cows won are the
clouds viewed from different standpoints. But Indra appears
also as winning the sun, a trait representing the clearing away
of the clouds from the sun after the thunder-storm, with which
has been confused or united the idea of the recovery of the sun
at dawn from the darkness of night. That some of the terminol-
ogy reflects an earlier view that Vrtra is the winter ^'^ which
freezes the stream, and that Indra Is the sun, is not proved, nor
need we hold that the poets of the Rgveda really meant only
that the god freed the rivers from the mountains and did not
realize that the mountains were clouds, as even the commen-
tators on the Rgveda knew.



36 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

In the ^gveda we find a close parallel of Indra, though in a
faded form, in Trita Aptya. He slays the three-headed son of
Tvastr as does Indra; Indra impels him and he Indra, who is
twice said to act for him. He is associated with the Manits, but
especially with soma, which he prepares; and this last feature
associates him with Thrita in the Avesta, who was the "third
man," as his name denotes, to prepare soma, the second being
Athwya. His slaying of the demon identifies him with the
Thraetaona of the Avesta, who kills the three-headed, six-
mouthed serpent, and he has a brother Dvita, " Second," while
Thraetaona has two, who seek to slay him as in the Brdhmanas
his brothers seek to murder Trita. ^^ The parallelism points
strongly to his identification with the lightning which is born
among the waters, as his second name, Aptya ("Watery"),
indicates; but he has been held to be a water-god, a storm-
god, a deified healer, and the moon. In all likelihood much of
his glory has been taken from him by the growth of Indra's
greatness.

The lightning seems also to lie at the base of the deity Apaih
Napat, who likewise appears in the Avesta, ^^ where he is a spirit
of the waters, dwelling in their depths and said to have seized
the brightness in the abysses of the ocean. He is also " Son of
the Waters," born and nourished in them, but he shines and is
golden, and is identified with Agni, who is often described as
abiding in the waters of the air. The identification with a water-
spirit pure and simple is, therefore, improbable, nor has he any
clear lunar characteristics. Yet another form of the lightning
is Mararisvan ("He that Grows in his Mother"), the thunder-
cloud. He is the messenger of Vivasvant and he brings Agni
down to men, as the Prometheus of India; by friction he pro-
duces Agni for the homes of men. The lightning may likewise
be represented by the "One-Footed Goat" (Aja Ekapad),
which is occasionally mentioned among aerial deities, the goat
symbolizing the swift movement of the flash and the single foot
the one place of striking the earth, although this obscure god



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 37

may also be a solar phenomenon. With Aparh Napat and Aja
Ekapad occurs the "Serpent of the Deep" (Ahi Budhnya), who
is born in the waters and sits in the bottom of the streams in the
spaces, and who is besought not to give his worshippers over to
injury. Such an invocation suggests that there is something
uncanny about the nature of the god, and his name allies him
to Vrtra, whose beneficent aspect he may represent, the dragon
in this case being conceived as friendly to man.

The other great aspect of the air, the wind, is represented by
Vata or Vayu, the former being more markedly elemental, the
latter more divine. So Vayu is often linked with Indra, being,
like him, a great drinker of soma, but Vata is associated only
with Parjanya, who is, like himself, a god of little but nature.
Vayu, the son-in-law of Tvastr, is swift of thought and thousand-
eyed; he has a team of ninety-nine or even a thousand horses
to draw his car; he drinks the clear soma and Is connected with
the nectar-yielding cow. Vata rushes on whirling up the dust;
he never rests; the place of his birth is unknown; man hears
his roaring, but cannot see his form. He is the breath of the
gods; Hke Rudra, he wafts healing and he can produce the
light. The identification with the Eddie Wodan or Odhin is
still unsubstantiated.

Parjanya personifies the cloud, flying round with a watery car
and drawing the waterskin downward. He Is often viewed as a
bull or even as a cow, the clouds being feminine. He quickens
the earth with seed, and the winds blow forth and the lightnings
fall; he Is a thunderer and a giver of Increase to plants, to grass,
to cows, mares, and women. He is even called the divine father
whose wife is the earth, and he Is said to rule over all the world;
he produces a calf himself, perhaps the lightning or the soma. He
is sometimes associated with the Maruts and is clearly akin to
Indra, of whom he later becomes a form. It is doubtful If the
Lithuanian thunder-god Perkunas can be identified with him.

The waters are also hailed as goddesses on their own account
and they are conceived as mothers, young wives, and granters of



38 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

boons. They nourish Agni and they bear away defilement and
purify; they bestow remedies and grant long life. They are
often associated with honey, and it may be that they were
sometimes regarded as having the soma within them.

Though Rudra, the prototype of Siva, is celebrated in only
three hymns of the Rgveda, he already bears remarkable traits.
He wears braided hair, hke Pusan; his lips are beautiful, and
his colour is brown. His car dazzles, and he wears a wonderful
necklace. He holds the thunderbolt and bears bow and arrows;
and his lightning-shaft shot from the sky traverses the earth.
He generated the Maruts from Prsni, and himself bears the
name Tryambaka (VII. lix. 12), denoting his descent from
three mothers, presumably a reference to the triple division of
the universe. He is fierce and strong, a ruler of the world, the
great Asura of heaven, bountiful, easily invoked and auspi-
cious, but this latter epithet, Siva,^^ is not yet attached to him
as his own.

None the less, Rudra is a very terrible deity and one whose
anger is to be deprecated, whence he is implored not to slay or
injure in his wrath the worshippers, their parents, men, children,
cattle, or horses. His ill will is deprecated, and his favour is
sought for the walking food, and he is even called man-slaying.
On the other hand, he has healing powers and a thousand reme-
dies; he is asked to remove sickness and disease; and he has a
special remedy called jaldsa, which may be the rain. This side
of his nature is as essential as the other and lends plausibility
to the view that he is the lightning, regarded mainly as a de-
stroying and terrible agency, but at the same time as the power
by which there is healing calm after storm and as propitious
in that the lightning spares as well as strikes. Yet his nature
has also been held to be a compound of a god of fire and a god
of wind, his name denoting "the Howler" (from rud, "to cry"),
as the chief of the spirits of the dead who storm along in the
wind, and as a god of forest and mountain whence diseases
speed to men.



GODS OF SKY AND AIR 39

Rudra's sons are the Maruts, the children of Prsni, the
storm-cloud, the heroes or males of heaven, born from the
laughter of lightning. All are equal In age, in abode, in mind,
and their number is thrice seven or thrice sixty. They are asso-
ciated with the goddess IndranI, though their lovely wife is
RodasI, who goes on their car. They are brilliant as fire; they
have spears on their shoulders, anklets on their feet, golden
ornaments on their breasts, fiery lightnings in their hands, and
golden helmets on their heads. Spotted steeds draw their
chariots. They are fierce and terrible, and yet playful like chil-
dren or calves. They are black-backed swans, four-tusked boars,
and resemble lions. As they advance they make the mountains
to tremble, uproot trees, and like wild elephants hew the forest;
they whirl up dust, and all creatures tremble before them.
Their great exploit is the making of rain, which they produce
amid the lightning; and a river on earth is styled Marudvrdha
("Rejoicing in the Maruts"). They are close associates of
Indra, whose might they increased when they sang a hymn;
singing they made the sun to shine and clove the mountain.
Not only do they help Indra to slay Vftra, but now and then
the exploit seems attributed to them alone; yet they failed
him once in the moment of struggle, whence, it seems, a quarrel
arose. When not associated with Indra they exhibit, in less
degree, the malevolent side of their father Rudra. Thus they
are implored to avert the arrow and stone which they hurl;
their wrath, which is like that of the serpent, is deprecated;
and evil is said to come from them; although, again like
Rudra, they have healing remedies which they bring from the
rivers Sindhu, Asikni, the sea, and the mountains.

There can be little doubt that the Maruts are the storm-gods,
the winds in this qualified use. The only other view of impor-
tance is that they are the souls of the dead who go in the storm-
wind,^^ but of this at least the Rgveda has no hint; nor is the
etymology from mr, "to die," enough to serve as a base for the
explanation, since their appellation may equally well come

VI — 4



40 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

from a root mr, "to shine," or "to crush," either of which
meanings would well enough accord with their figure. In later
days they sank from their estate, as we shall see, and became
the celestial counterparts of the Vaisyas, the common folk of
earth as distinguished from the two higher castes of Brahmans
(priests) and Ksatriyas (warriors). Finally they degenerated
into mere wind-godlings, their very name becoming a synonym
for "wind"; and at the present day memory of them has all
but vanished.

[Prometheus]

CHAPTER II
THE RGVEDA

{Continued)
GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD

AMONG the gods connected with earth the first place be-
longs to Agni, who, after Indra, receives the greatest num-
ber of hymns in the Rgveda, more than two hundred being in
his honour. Unlike Indra, however, anthropomorphism has
scarcely aflFected Agni's personality, which is ever full of the
element from which it is composed. Thus he is described as
butter-haired or as flame-haired, tawny-bearded, and butter-
backed; in one account he is headless and footless, but in an-
other he has three heads and seven rays; he faces in all direc-
tions; he has three tongues and a thousand eyes. He is often
likened to animals, as to a bull for his strength or to a calf as
being born, or to a steed yoked to the pole of the sacrifice; or
again he is winged, an eagle or an aquatic bird in the waters;
and once he is even called a winged serpent. His food is ghee
or oil or wood, but like the other gods he drinks the soma.
Brilliant In appearance, his track is black; driven by the wind,
he shaves the earth as a barber a beard. He roars terribly, and
the birds fly before his devouring sparks; he rises aloft to the
sky and licks even the heaven. He is himself likened to a char-
iot, but he is borne in one and in it he carries the gods to the
sacrifice. He is the child of sky and earth or of Tvastr and the
waters, but VIsnu and Indra begat him, or Indra generated
him between two stones. On earth he is produced in the two
fire-sticks who are figured as his father (the upper) and his
mother (the lower), or as two mothers, or as a mother who can-




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GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 43

not suckle. The ten maidens who generate him are the ten
fingers, and as "Son of Strength" his name bears witness to
the force needed to create the flame. As thus produced for the
sacrifice every morning he has the title of youngest, although
as the first sacrificer he is also the oldest. Or, again, he is born
in the trees or the plants or on the navel of earth, the place of
the sacrifice.

But Agni is bom also in the waters of the atmosphere; he is
Aparii Napat ("Child of the Waters"), the bull which grows
in the lap of the waters. Possibly, however, in some cases at
least, the waters in which he is found are those of earth, for he
is mentioned as being in the waters and the plants. He is born
likewise from heaven in the form of lightning; Matarisvan
brought him down, doubtless a reminiscence of conflagrations
caused by the lightning. He is also identified sometimes with
the sun, though the solar luminary is more often conceived as
a separate deity. Thus he has three births — in the sky, in the
waters, and on earth, though the order is also given as sky,
earth, and waters. This is the earliest form of triad in Indian
religion, and probably from it arose the other form of sun,
wind, and fire, for which (though not in the Rgveda) sun, Indra,
and fire is a variant. The three fires in the ritual correspond
with the three divine forms. On the other hand, Agni has two
births when the air and the sky are taken as one; he descends
in rain and is born from the plants, and rises again to the sky,
whence we have the mystic commands that Agni should sacrifice
to himself or bring himself to the sacrifice. Or, again, he can
be said to have many births from the many fires kindled on
earth. Yet the number three reappears in the conception of
the brothers of Agni. Indra is said to be his twin, and from
him Agni borrows the exploit of defeating the Panis. Mysti-
cally Agni is Varuna in the evening, Mitra in the morning,
Savitr as he traverses the air, and Indra as he illumines the
sky in the midst.

Agni is closely connected with the home, of which he is the



44 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

sacred fire. He alone bears the title of Grhapati, or "Lord of
the House"; and he is the guest in each abode as kinsman,
friend, or father, or even as son. Moreover he is the ancestral
god, the god of Bharata, of Divodasa, of Trasadasyu, and of
other heroes. He brings the gods to the sacrifice or takes the
sacrifice to them; and thus he is a messenger, ever busy trav-
elling between the worlds. Beyond all else he is the priest of
the sacrifice, and one legend tells that he wearied of the task,
but consented to continue in it on receiving the due payment for
which he asked. In another aspect he eats the dead, for he
burns the body on the funeral pile, and in this character he is
carefully distinguished from his form as bearer of oblations.
He is, further, not merely a priest, but a seer omniscient, Jata-
vedas ("Who Knows All Generations"). He inspires men and
delivers and protects them. Riches and rain are his gifts, as
are offspring and prosperity; he forgives sin, averts the wrath
of Varuna, and makes men guiltless before Aditi.

To the gods also Agni is a benefactor; he delivered them
from a curse, won them great space in battle, and is even called
"the Slayer of Vrtra." His main feat, however, is the burning
of the Raksases who infest the sacrifice, a sign of the early use
of fire to destroy demons. By magic the lighting of Agni may
even bring about the rising of the sun in the sky.

As Vaisvanara Agni is the " Fire of All Men," and In him has
been seen a tribal fire ^ as opposed to the fire of each house-
holder, though the name is more normally thought to mean
" Fire in All its Aspects." As Tanunapat (" Son of Self") Agni's
spontaneous birth from wood and cloud seems to be referred
to; as Narasaihsa ("Praise of Men") he may be either the per-
sonification of the praise of man, or possibly the flame of the
southern of the three fires, which is particularly connected
with the fathers. Though Agni's name, which may mean
"agile," is not Avestan, the fire-cult is clearly Iranian, and the
Atharvan priests of the Rgveda, who are brought into close rela-
tion with the fire, have their parallel in the Athravans, or fire-



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 45

priests, of Iran. There is also an obvious parallel to the fire of
the Indian householder in the domestic fire in the Roman
household and in Greece.^

Distinct from Agni in personality is the god Brhaspati, who
is described as seven-mouthed and seven-rayed, beautiful-
tongued, sharp-horned, blue-backed, and hundred-winged.
He has a bow the string of which is "Holy Order" (Rta),
wields a golden hatchet, bears an iron axe, and rides in a car
with ruddy steeds. Born from great light in the highest heaven,
with a roar he drives away darkness. He is the father of the
gods, but is created by Tvastr. He is a priest above others,
the domestic priest, or p^irohita, of the gods, and their Brahman
priest; he is "the Lord of Prayer" under the title Brah-
manaspati. He Is closely connected with Agni, with whom he
appears at times to be Identified, has three abodes like him, and
seems twice to be called Narasamsa. Yet he has also appro-
priated the deeds of Indra, for he opens the cow-stall and lets
the waters loose; with his singing host he tore Vala asunder
and drove out the lowing cows; when he rent the defences of
Vala, he revealed the treasures of the kine; being in the cloud,
he shouts after the many cows. He also seeks light in the dark-
ness and finds dawn, light, and Agni, and dispels the darkness.
Hence he is giver of victory in general, a bearer of the bolt, is
Invoked with the Maruts, and bears Indra's special epithet of
"bountiful." Like the other gods he protects his worshippers,
prolongs life, and removes disease. As "Lord of Prayer" he can
scarcely be anything more than a development of one side of
Agni's character, but it is clear that the process must have
been complete before the time of the Rgveda, since there is no
trace of a growth of this deity In that Sarhhita. The alterna-
tive is to lay stress on the Indra side of his nature and to regard
him as a priestly abstraction of Indra, or to find in him an ab-
stract deity, the embodiment of priestly action who has as-
sumed concrete features from the gods Agni and Indra, but
this hypothesis is unlikely.



46 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Soma, the Avestan Haoma ("the Pressed Juice"), is the deity
of the whole of the ninth book of the Rgveda and of six hymns
elsewhere. The plant, which has not been identified for certain
with any modern species, yielded, when its shoots were pressed,
a juice which after careful straining was offered, pure or with
admixture of milk, etc., to the gods and drunk by the priests.
The colour was brown or ruddy, and frequent mention is made
of the stones by which it was pounded, though it seems also
to have been produced by mortar and pestle, as among the
Parsis. As passing through the filter or strainer, soma is called
pavamana ("flowing clear"). Besides milk, sour milk and
barley water were commonly added, and hence Soma is lord
of the waters, who makes the rain to stream from heaven. The
waters are his sisters, and he is the embryo or child of the
waters. The sound of the juice as it flows is likened to thunder,
its swiftness to that of a steed.

The exhilarating power of the soma doubtless explains his
divinity. It is a plant which confers powers beyond the natural,
and thus soma is the draught of immortality {amrta), the am-
brosia. The gods love it; it gives them immortality no less
than men, and one hymn depicts the ecstasy of feeling produced
in Indra by the drink, which makes him feel able to dispose of
the earth at his pleasure. Soma is also rich in healing and lord
of the plants. When quaifed, he stimulates speech and is the
lord of speech. He is a maker of seers, a protector of prayer,
and his wisdom is extolled. He gazes with wisdom on men and
so has a thousand eyes. The fathers, no less than men and
gods, love him, and through him they found the light and the
cows. The great deeds of the gods owe their success to their
drinking the soma, with three lakes of which Indra fills him-
self for the slaying of Vrtra. When drunk by Indra, Soma made
the sun to rise in the sky, and hence Soma is declared to per-
form the feat; he found the light and made the sun to shine.
So, too, he supports the two worlds and is lord of the quarters.
Like Indra he is a terrible warrior, ever victorious, winning for



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 47

his worshippers chariots, horses, gold, heaven, water, and a
thousand boons. He bears terrible, sharp weapons, including
a thousand-pointed shaft. Again like Indra he is described as
a bull, and the waters are the cows, which he fertilizes. He
rides in Indra's car, and the Maruts are his friends; the winds
gladden him, and Vayu is his guardian.

The abode of Soma is in the mountains, of which Mujavant
is specially mentioned, nor need we doubt that the mountains
are primarily of earth. But Soma is also celestial, and his birth
is in heaven. He Is the child of the sky or of the sun or of Par-
janya. He is the lord, the bird of heaven, he stands above all
worlds like the god Surya; the drops, when purified in the
strainer (mystically the heaven), pour from the air upon the
earth. The myth of his descent from the sky is variously told :
the swift eagle brought the soma for Indra through the air
with his foot; flying swift as thought, he broke through the
iron castles, and going to heaven, he bore the soma down for
Indra. Yet the eagle did not perform his feat unscathed, for
as he fled with the soma, the archer Krsanu shot at him and
knocked out a feather. The myth seems to denote that the
lightning in the form of the eagle burst through the castle of
the storm-cloud and brought down the water of the cloud,
conceived as the ambrosia,^ while at the same time fire came
to earth.

Soma is also the king of rivers, the king of the whole earth,
the king or father of the gods, and the king of gods and mortals;
though often called a god, in one passage he is expressly styled
a god pressed for the gods.

As early as the Rgveda there is some trace of that identifica-
tion of the moon with Soma which is fully accomplished in the
Brdhviana period. Thus In the marriage hymn (x. 85) In which
Surya, the sun-maiden, Is said to be wedded to Soma he is
spoken of as in the lap of the naksatras, or lunar mansions, and
it Is stated that no one eats of that soma which is known by
the priest; while the same identification may be at the bottom



48 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

of the expressions used In some of the more mystic hymns.
The process of identification may have been brought about by
the practice of calling the soma celestial and bright, as dis-
pelling the darkness and dwelling in the water, and also by
naming it the drop. This may easily enough have given rise to
the concept that the soma was the drop-like moon, and so
soma In the bowls is actually said to be like the moon In the
waters. It has been held that Soma in the Ilgveda as a deity Is
really the moon, the receptacle of the ambrosia, which Is re-
vealed on earth in the form of the soma that is used in the ritual.
This view, however, runs counter to native tradition, which
still realizes the distinction between Soma and the moon in the
I^gveda, and to the clear language of the texts.

Comparison with the Avesta shows that In Iran also the
plant was crushed and mixed with milk, and that in Iran, as In
India, the celestial soma is distinguished from the terrestrial,
and the drink from the god: it grows on a mountain and Is
brought by an eagle; It gives light, slays demons, and bestows
blessings; but whereas in India the first preparers were two,
Vivasvant and Trita Aptya, in Iran they are three, Vivanghvant,
Athwya, and Thrita.^ Possibly the conception goes back to an
older period, to the nectar in the shape of honey mead brought
down from heaven by an eagle from its guardian demon, this
hypothesis being confirmed by the legend of the nectar brought
by the eagle of Zeus and the mead carried off by the eagle
metamorphosis of Odhin.

In comparison with the celestial waters the terrestrial
rivers play little part In the Rgveda. In one hymn (x. 75) the
Sindhu, or Indus, is celebrated with its tributaries, and an-
other hymn (11. 33) lauds the Vipas, or Beas, and the Sutudrl,
or Sutlej. The Sarasvati, however. Is often praised in terms of
hyperbole as treading with her waves the peaks of the moun-
tains, as sevenfold, best of mothers, of rivers, and of goddesses.
Even a celestial origin is ascribed^ to her, an anticipation of
the later myth of the heavenly birth of the Ganges. With the



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 49

Asvins she gave refreshment to Indra, and she is invoked to-
gether with the Ida (or Ila), or sacrificial food, and Bharati,
who seems to be the Ida of the Bharatas living along her bank.
Sacrifices are mentioned as performed in the SarasvatI and
Drsadvati; and with her is invoked Sarasvant, who seems no
more than a male SarasvatI, or water-genius. The precise iden-
tification of the SarasvatI is uncertain. The name is identical
with the Harahvaiti of the Avesta, which is generally taken to
be the Helmund in Afghanistan, and if the SarasvatI is still
that river in the Rgveda, there must have been Indian settle-
ments in the Vedic period much farther west than is usually
assumed to be the case. On the other hand, the description of
the SarasvatI as of great size with seven streams and as seven-
fold accords better with the great stream of the Indus, and the
word may have been a second name of that river. When, how-
ever, it is mentioned with the Drsadvati, a small stream in the
middle country, it is clear that it is the earlier form of the mod-
ern river still bearing the same name, which at present loses
itself in the sands, but which in former days may well have
been a much more important stream running into the Indus.
It was in the land near these two rivers that the Vedic culture
took its full development, at least in the subsequent period,
and it is not improbable that as early as the Rgveda the stream
was invested with most of its later importance.^

The earth receives such worship as is hers in connexion with
the sky, but only one hymn (v. 84) is devoted to her praise
alone, and even in it reference is made to the rain which her
spouse sends. She bears the burden of the mountains and sup-
ports in the ground the trees of the forest; she is great, firm,
and shining. Her name, Prthivi, means "broad," and a poet
tells that Indra spread her out.

Apart from the obviously concrete gods we find a certain
number who may be described as abstract in that the physical
foundation has either disappeared or has never been present.
The great majority of these gods belong to the former type:



50 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

they represent the development of aspects of more concrete
deities which have come to be detached from their original
owners. Of these the most famous is Savitr, who is the sun,
and yet is a distinct god as the stimulating power of the solar
luminary. Tvastr represents a further stage of detachment
from a physical background. He is essentially the cunning
artificer, who wrought the cup which contains the ambrosia
of the gods, and which the Rbhus later divided into four; he
made the swift steed and the bolt of Indra, and he sharpens the
iron axe of Brahmanaspati. He shapes all forms and makes
the husband and wife for each other in the womb; and he also
creates the human race indirectly, for Yama and Yami, the
primeval twins, are children of his daughter Saranyu. It seems
even that he is the father of Indra, though the latter stole the
soma from him and even slew him, as afterward he certainly
killed his son, the three-headed Visvariipa. He is also closely
associated with the wives of the gods. Obscure as is his origin,
he presents many features of a solar character, and with this
would accord well enough the view that his cup is the moon,
where the ambrosia is to be found.

Much feebler personalities are those of Dhatr ("Estab-
lisher"), an epithet of Indra or Visvakarman, of Vidhatr
("Disposer"), also an epithet of these deities, Dhartr ("Sup-
porter"), and Tratr ("Protector"), an epithet of Agni or
Indra, and the leader-god who occurs in one hymn. Of these
Dhatr alone has a subsequent history of interest, as he later
ranks as a creator and is a synonym of Prajapati. That god's
name, "Lord of Offspring," is used as an epithet of Soma and
of Savitr, but as an independent deity he appears only in the
tenth and latest book of the Rgveda, where his power to make
prolific is celebrated. In one hymn (x. 121) is described a
"Golden Germ," Hiranyagarbha, creator of heaven and earth,
of the waters and all that lives. The "Golden Germ" is
doubtless Prajapati, but from the refrain "What god" {kasmai
devdya) a deity Who {Ka deva) was later evolved.

[Prometheus]

GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 51

"In the beginning rose Hiranyagarbha, born only lord of all created

beings.
He fixed and holdeth up this earth and heaven. What god shall we

adore with our oblation?
Giver of vital breath, of power and vigour, he whose commandments

all the gods acknowledge:
Whose shade is death, whose lustre makes immortal. What god shall

we adore with our oblation.''
Who by his grandeur hath become sole ruler of all the moving world

that breathes and slumbers;
He who is lord of men and lord of cattle. What god shall we adore

with our oblation?
His, through his might, are these snow-covered mountains, and men

call sea and Rasa his possession:
His arms are these, his are these heavenly regions. What god shall we

adore with our oblation?
By him the heavens are strong and earth is stedfast, by him light's

realm and sky-vault are supported:
By him the regions in mid-air were measured. What god shall we

adore with our oblation?
To him, supported by his help, two armies embattled look while

trembling in their spirit.
When over them the risen sun is shining. What god shall we adore

with our oblation?
What time the mighty waters came, containing the universal germ,

producing Agni,
Thence sprang the gods' one spirit into being. What god shall we

adore with our oblation?
He in his might surveyed the floods, containing productive force and

generating Worship.
He is the god of gods, and none beside him. What god shall we adore

with our oblation? ,

Ne'er may he harm us who is earth's begetter, nor he whose laws are

sure, the heavens' creator,
He who brought forth the great and lucid waters. What god shall we

adore with our oblation?
Prajapati! thou onlycomprehendest all these created things, and none

beside thee.
Grant us our hearts' desire when we invoke thee: may we have store

of riches in possession."^

This passage is the starting-point of his great history which
culminates in the conception of the absolute but personal
Brahma.



52 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Another personification of the tenth book which later is
merged in the personality of Prajapati is Visvakarman ("All-
Maker"), whose name is used earlier as an epithet of Indra
and the sun. He is described as having eyes, a face, arms, and
feet on every side, just as Brahma is later four-faced. He Is
winged, and Is a lord of speech, and he assigns their names to
the gods. He is the highest apparition, establisher, and dis-
poser. Perhaps in origin he Is only a form of the sun, but in his
development he passes over to become one side of Prajapati
as architect.

Another aspect of the Supreme Is presented by the Purusa
Sukta, or "Hymn of Man" (x. 90), which describes the origin
of the universe from the sacrifice of a primeval Purusa, who is
declared distinctly to be the whole universe. By the sacrifice
the sky was fashioned from his head, from his navel the at-
mosphere, and from his feet the earth. The sun sprang from
his eye, the moon from his mind, wind from his breath, Agni
and Soma from his mouth; and the four classes of men were
produced from his head, arms, thighs, and feet respectively.
The conception Is important, for Purusa as spirit throughout
Indian religion, and still more throughout Indian philosophy,
is often given the position of Prajapati. On the other hand,
there Is primitive thought at the bottom of the conception of
the origin of the world from the sacrifice of a giant.''

Another and different abstraction Is found in the deification
of Manyu ("Wrath"), a personification which seems to owe
its origin to the fierce anger of Indra and which is Invoked in
two hymns of the Rgveda (x. 83-84). He Is of irresistible might
and Is self-existent; he glows like fire, slays Vrtra, Is accom-
panied by the Maruts, grants victory like Indra, and bestows
wealth. United with Tapas ("Ardour"), he protects his wor-
shippers and slays the foe. Other personifications of qualities
are In the main feminine and will be noted with the other
female deities.

The goddesses In the Rgveda play but a small part beside the



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 53

gods, and the only great one Is Usas, though Sarasvati is of
some slight importance. To Indra, Varuna, and Agni are as-
signed IndranI, VarunanI, and Agnayi respectively, but they
are mere names. Prthivi ("Earth"), who is rather frequently
named with Dyaus, has only one hymn to herself, while RatrT
("Night") is invoked as the bright starlit night, at whose ap-
proach men return home as birds hasten back to their nests,
and who is asked to keep the thief and the wolf away. Orig-
inally a personification of the thunder. Vac ("Speech") is
celebrated in one hymn (x. 125) in which she describes herself.
She accompanies all the gods and supports Mitra and Varuna,
Indra and Agni, and the Asvins, besides bending Rudra's bow
against the unbeliever. Purandhi, the Avestan Parendi, is the
goddess of plenty and is mentioned with Bhaga, while Dhisana,
another goddess (perhaps of plenty), occurs a dozen times.
The butter-handed and butter-footed Ila has a more concrete
foundation, for she is the personification of the offering of but-
ter and milk in the sacrifice. Brhaddiva, Sinlvali, Raka, and
Gungii are nothing but names. Prsni is more real: she is the
mother of the Maruts, perhaps the spotted storm-cloud.
Saranyu figures in an interesting but fragmentary myth.
Tvastr made a wedding for his daughter with Vivasvant, but
during the ceremony the bride vanished away. Thereupon the
gods gave one of similar form to Vivasvant, but in some way
Saranyu seems still to have borne the Asvins to him, as well
perhaps as Yama and Yami, for the hymn (x. 17) calls her
"mother of Yama." The fragmentary story is put together by
Yaska in the following shape. Saranyu bore to Vivasvant
Yama and Yami, and then substituting one of like form for
herself, she fled away in the guise of a mare. Vivasvant, how-
ever, pursued in the shape of a horse and united with her, and
she bore the Asvins, while her substitute gave birth to Manu.
The legend may be old, for it has a curious similarity to the
story of the Tilphossan Erinys,^ though the names do not
philologically tally. At any rate the legend seems to have no



54 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

mythical intention, but to contain some effort to explain the
name of Manu as " Son of Her of Like Shape," which appears to
be known as early as the ^gveda. Perhaps she is another form
of the dawn-goddess.

Other goddesses are personifications of abstract Ideas, such
as Sraddha ("Faith"), who Is celebrated In a short hymn
(x. 151). Through her the fire Is kindled, ghee Is offered, and
wealth is obtained, and she is invoked morning, noon, and
night. Anumati represents the "favour" of the gods. Aramati
("Devotion") and Sunrta ("Bounteousness") are also per-
sonified. Asunltl ("Spirit Life") is besought to prolong life,
while NIrrti ("Decease" or "Dissolution") presides over death.
These are only faint figures in comparison with AdItI, if that
deity Is to be reckoned among the personifications of abstract
concepts. She Is singularly without definitive features of a
physical kind, though, in contrast to the other abstractions,
she Is commonly known throughout the Rgveda. She is ex-
panded, bright, and luminous; she Is a mistress of a bright stall
and a supporter of creatures; and she belongs to all men. She
Is the mother of MItra and Varuna, of Aryaman, and of eight
sons, but she is also said to be the sister of the Adityas, the
daughter of the Vasus, and the mother of the Rudras. She is
often Invoked to release from sin or guilt, and with MItra and
Varuna she is Implored to forgive sin. Evil-doers are cut off
from Aditi; and Varuna, Agni, and Savitr are besought to free
from guilt before her. She is Identified with the earth, though
the sky is also mentioned under the name Aditi. In many
places, however, she Is named together with (and therefore as
distinct from) sky and earth; and yet again It is said (I. Ixxxix.
10): "Aditi is the sky; Aditi is the air; Aditi Is the mother,
father, and son; Aditi is all the gods and the live tribes; ^ Aditi
is whatever has been born; Aditi Is whatever shall be born."
Elsewhere Aditi Is made both mother and daughter of Daksa
by a species of reciprocal generation which is not rare in the
Rgveda; and In yet other passages she Is hailed as a cow.



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 55

The name AditI means "Unbinding" or "Boundlessness,"
and the name Aditya as applied to a group of bright gods de-
notes them, beyond doubt, as the sons of Aditi. Hence she has
been regarded as a personification of the sky or of the visible
infinite, the expanse beyond the earth, the clouds and the sky,
or the eternal celestial light which sustains the Adityas. Or,
if stress be laid not on her connexion with the light, but on the
view that she is a cow, she can be referred to earth, as the
mother of all. In these senses she would be concrete in origin.
On the other hand, she has also been derived from the epithet
Aditi, the "boundless," as applied to the sky, or yet more ab-
stractly from the epithet "sons of Aditi," in the sense of "sons
of boundlessness," referring to the Adityas. As Indra is called
"son of strength," and later "Strength" (Sad) is personified
as his wife (perhaps not in the Rgveda itself), so Aditi may have
been developed in pre-Rgvedic times from such a phrase, which
would account for her frequent appearance, even though a
more concrete origin seems probable for such a deity. On the
other hand, from her is deduced as her opposite Diti, who occurs
twice or thrice in the Rgveda, though in an indeterminate sense.

Another goddess of indefinite character is Surya. She cannot
be other than the daughter of the Sun, for both she and that
deity appear in the same relation to the Asvins. They are
Surya's two husbands whom she chose; she or the maiden as-
cended their car. They possess Surya as their own, and she ac-
companies them on their car, whose three wheels perhaps cor-
respond to its three occupants. Through their connexion with
Surya they are invoked to conduct the bride home on their car,
and it is said that when Savitr gave Surya to her husband, Soma
was wooer, while the Asvins were the groomsmen. The gods are
also said to have given Piisan to Surya, who bears elsewhere the
name Asvinl. The sun as a female is a remarkable idea, and
therefore Surya has often been taken as the dawn, but the
name presents difficulties, since it does not contain any patro-
nymic element; and, moreover, the conception contained in



56 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

the wedding-hymn of the union of Soma (no doubt the moon)
and the dawn would be wholly unusual.

The constant grouping of gods in the Rgveda comes to formal
expression In the practice of joint invocation, which finds its
natural starting-point in the concept of heaven and earth, who
are far oftener worshipped as joint than as separate deities.
Even Mitra and Varuna are much more frequently a pair than
taken individually, and this use may be old, since Ahura and
MIthra are thus coupled in the Avesta. A more curious com-
pound Is Indra and Varuna, the warlike god and the slayer of
Vrtra united with the divinity who supports men In peace and
wisdom. Indra is much more often conjoined with Agnl, and
the pair show In the main the characteristics of the former god,
though something of Agni's priestly nature is also ascribed to
them. With Visnu Indra strides out boldly, with Vayu he
drinks the soma, with Pusan he slays Vrtras, and to their joint
abode the goat conveys the sacrificial horse after death. Soma
is invoked with Pusan and with Rudra, Agni very rarely with
Soma and Parjanya. A more natural pair are Parjanya and
Vata ("Rain" and "Wind"), and similar unions are Day and
Night, and Sun and Moon. Naturally enough, these dualities
develop little distinct character.

Of groups of gods the most important are the Maruts, who
are numbered now as twenty-one and now as a hundred and
eighty and who are Indra's followers, although as Rudras they
are occasionally associated with Rudra as their father. The
Adityas are smaller in number, being given as seven or eight,
while the Vasus are indeterminate In number as in character,
the name denoting no more than "the Bright Ones." All the
deities are summed up in the concept Visve Devah ("All-
Gods"), but though originally intended to include all, the term
even in the Rgveda becomes applied to a special body who are
named together with other groups, such as the Vasus and the
Adityas.

An odd and curious group of deities is that of the Sadhyas,



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 57

who occur in the Rgveda and occasionally in the later literature.
Neither their name nor the scanty notices of them justify any
conclusion as to their real nature, though it has been sug-
gested ^° that they may possibly be a class of the fathers (the
kindly dead).

Beside the great gods the Vedic pantheon has many minor
personages who are not regarded as enjoying the height of
divinity which is ascribed to the leading figures. Of these the
chief are the Rbhus, who are three in number, Rbhu or ELbhu-
ksan, Vibhvan, and Vaja. They are the sons of Sudhanvan
("Good Archer"), though once they are called collectively the
sons of Indra and the grandchildren of Might, and again they
are described as sons of Manu. They acquired their rank as
divine by the skill of their deeds, which raised them to the sky.
They were mortal at first, but gained immortality, for the gods
so admired their skilled work that Vaja became the artificer of
the gods, Rbhuksan of Indra, and Vibhvan of Varuna. Their
great feats were five: for the Asvins they made a car which,
without horses or reins, and with three wheels, traverses space;
for Indra they fashioned the two bay steeds; from a hide they
wrought a cow which gives nectar and the cow they reunited
with the calf, the beneficiary of this marvel being, we infer,
Bfhaspati; they rejuvenated their parents (apparently here
sky and earth), who were very old and frail; and finally they
made into four the one cup of Tvastr, the drinking- vessel of
the gods, this being done at the divine behest conveyed by
Agni, who promised them in return equal worship with the
gods. Tvastr agreed, it seems, to the remaking of the cup, but
it is also said that when he saw the four he hid himself among
the females and desired to slay the Rbhus for the desecration,
though the latter declared that they intended no disrespect.

In addition to their great deeds a wonderful thing befell
them. After wandering in swift course round the sky windsped,
they came to the house of Savitr, who conferred immortality
upon them: when, after slumbering for twelve days, they had



58 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

rejoiced in the hospitality of Agohya, they made fields and de-
flected the streams; plants occupied the dry ground and the
waters the low lands. After their sleep they asked Agohya who
had awakened them; In a year they looked around them; and
the goat declared the dog to be the awakener. Agohya can
hardly be anything but the sun, and the period of their sleep
has been thought to be the winter solstice, and has been com-
pared with the Teutonic twelve nights of licence at that period.
The nights, it has been suggested, ^^ are Intended to make good
the defects of the Vedic year of 360 days by Inserting Intercalary
days; and the goat and the dog have led to still wilder flights
of speculative Imagination. But as rbhu means "handy" or
"dexterous" and Is akin to the German Elbe and the English
elf, and as the ^bhus are much more than mere men, It Is not
improbable that they represent the three seasons which mark
the earliest division of the Indian year, and their dwelling in
the house of Agohya signifies the turn of life at the winter sol-
stice. The cup of Tvastr may possibly be the moon, and the
four parts Into which It is expanded may symbolize the four
phases of the moon. They may, however, have had a humbler
origin as no more than elves who gradually won a higher rank,
although their human attributes may be due to another cause:
it is possible that they were the favourite deities of a chariot-
making clan which was admitted into the VedIc circle, but
whose gods suffered some diminution of rank in the process, for
it is a fact that In the period of the Brdhmanas the chariot-
makers, or Rathakaras, form a distinct class by themselves.

Even more obscure than the Rbhus is the figure of the Gan-
dharva; he bears the epithet Visvavasu ("Possessing All
Good"), and this is later a proper name, while at the same time
the single Gandharva is converted into many. This idea is not
absolutely strange to the Rgveda, but it is found only thrice,
and the name Gandharva is practically unknown to books
ii-vii, the nucleus of the collection. Yet the figure Is old, for the
Gandarewa is found in the Avesta as a dragon-like monster.



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 59

The Gandharva is heavenly and dwells In the high region of the
sky; he Is a measurer of space and Is closely connected with
the sun, the sun-bird, and the sun-steed, while in one passage
he Is possibly Identified with the rainbow. He is also associated
with the soma; he guards its place and protects the races of
the gods. It is In this capacity, it would seem, that he appears
as an enemy whom Indra pierces, just as in the Avesta the
Gandarewa, dwelling In the sea Vourukasha, the abode of the
White Haoma, battles with and is overcome by Keresaspa.^^
From another point of view Soma Is said to be the Gandharva of
the waters, and the Gandharva and the Maiden of the Waters
are claimed as the parents of Yama and YamI, the first pair on
earth. So, too, the Gandharva is the beloved of the Apsaras,
whence he is associated with the wedding ceremony and in the
first days of marriage is a rival of the husband.

The Gandharva has brilliant weapons and fragrant garments,
while the Gandharvas are described as wind-haired, so that it
has been suggested that the Gandharvas are the spirits of the
wind, closely connected with the souls of the dead and the
Greek Centaurs, with whose name (In defiance of philology)
their name is identified. Yet there is no sufficient ground to
justify this hypothesis or any of the other divergent views
which see In the Gandharva the rainbow, or the rising sun or
the moon, or the spirit of the clouds, or Soma (which he
guards).

The companion of the Gandharva, the Apsaras, is likewise an
obscure figure, though the name denotes "moving in the
waters," and the original conception may well be that of a
water-nymph, whence the mingling of the water with the soma
Is described as the flowing to Soma of the Apsarases of the
ocean. Of one, UrvasI, we have the record that she was the
mother of the sage Vaslstha, to whose family are ascribed the
hymns of the seventh book of the Rgveda, and an obscure hymn
(x. 95) contains a dialogue between her and her earthly lover
Pururavas, whom she seems to have forsaken after spending

[Prometheus]

6o INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

four autumns among mortals and whom she consoles by prom-
ising him bliss in heaven. From this story has been derived the
view that Pururavas is the sun and Urvasi the dawn, which
disappears at the rise of the sun.

Much less prominent than even the Gandharva and the
Apsarases is the "Lord of the Dwelling" (Vastospati), who is
invoked in one hymn (vii. 54) to afford a favourable entry, to
bless man and beast, and to grant prosperity in cattle and
horses. There can be no real doubt that he is the tutelary spirit
of the house. Another deity of the same type is the "Lord of
the Field," who is asked to bestow cattle and horses and to fill
heaven and earth with sweetness, while the "Furrow" itself,
Sita, is invoked to give rich blessings and crops. It would, of
course, be an error to conclude from the meagreness of their
mythology that these were not powerful deities, but it is clear
that they had won no real place in the pantheon of the tribal
priests whose views are presented in the Rgveda.

So also the divinities of the mountains, the plants, and the
trees are far from important in the Rgveda. Parvata ("Moun-
tain") is indeed found thrice coupled with Indra, and the
mountains are celebrated along with the waters, rivers, plants,
trees, heaven, and earth. The plants have a hymn to them-
selves (x. 97) in which they are hailed, for their healing powers,
as mothers and goddesses, and Soma is said to be their king;
and the forest trees, too, are occasionally mentioned as deities,
chiefly with the waters and the mountains. The "Goddess of
the Jungle," AranyanI, is invoked in one hymn (x. 146), where
she is described as the mother of beasts and as rich in food with-
out tillage, and her uncanny sights and sounds are set forth
with vivid force and power, though poetically rather than
mythologically.

A different side of religious thought is represented by the
deification of artificial objects, but the transition from such
worships as those of the tree to articles made of it is easy and
natural enough. It can be seen at work in the case of the adora-



PLATE V

Apsarases

The celestial nymphs, who are among the chief
adornments of Indra's heaven, are shown in frescoes
which are the oldest extant specimens of Indian
paintings. From a fresco at Ajanta, Berar. After
Ajanta Frescoes^ Plate II, No. 3.



K



\^^




GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 6i

tlon of the sacrificial post, which is invoked as Vanaspati or
Svaru and which is a god who, thrice anointed with ghee, is
asked to let the offerings go to the gods. The sacrificial grass
(the barhis) and the doors leading to the place of the sacrifice
are likewise divine, while the pressing stones are invoked to
drive demons away and to bestow wealth and offspring. Thus
also the plough and the ploughshare (Sunasira) as well as the
weapons of war, the arrow, bow, quiver, and armour, nay, even
the drum, are hailed as divine. Doubtless in this we are to see
fetishism rather than full divinity: the thing adored attains
for the time being and in its special use a holiness which is not
perpetually and normally its own. Such also must have been
the character of the image or other representation of Indra
which one poet offers to sell for ten cows, on condition that it
shall be returned to him when he has slain his foes.

The religion of the Rgveda is predominantly anthropomorphic
in its representations of the gods, and theriomorphism plays a
comparatively limited part. Yet there is an exception in the
case of the sun, who appears repeatedly in the form of a horse.
Thus the famous steed Dadhikra or Dadhikravan, who speeds
like the winds along the bending ways, is not only conceived as
winged, but is likened to a swooping eagle and is actually called
an eagle. He pervades the five tribes with his power as the sun
fills the waters with his light; his adversaries fear him like the
thunder from heaven when he fights against a thousand; and
he is the swan dwelling in the light. He is invoked with Agni
and with Usas, and his name may mean "scattering curdled
milk," in allusion to the dew which appears at sunrise. No
glorification of a famous racehorse could account for these
epithets. Tarksya seems to be another form of the sun-horse,
for the language used of him is similar to that regarding Da-
dhikra. Perhaps, too, Paidva, the courser brought by the Asvins
to Pedu to replace an inferior steed, may also be a solar horse;
nor is there any doubt that Etasa is the horse of the sun, who
bears along the chariot of the god.



62 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

After the horse the cow takes an important place in the myth-
ology. The rain-clouds are cows, and the gods fight for them
against the demons. The beams of dawn are also clouds, but it
is possible that the cow in itself had begun to receive reverence,
being addressed as Aditi and a goddess, and being described as
inviolable, nor later is there any doubt of direct zoolatry.
Indra, Agni, and rarely Dyaus are described as bulls; the boar
is used as a description of Rudra, the Maruts, and Vrtra.
Soma, Agni, and the sun are hailed as birds, and an eagle carried
down the soma for Indra, apparently representing Indra's
lightning. The crow and the pigeon are the messengers of
Yama, the god of death, and a bird of omen is invoked. The
"Serpent" (Ahi) is a form of the demon Vrtra, but there is no
trace of the worship of snakes as such. Animals serve also as
steeds for the gods: the Asvins use the ass, and Piisan the goat,
but horses are normal. Yama has two dogs, the ofi"spring of
Sarama, though she does not appear in the Rgveda as a bitch.
Indra has a monkey, of whom a late hymn (x. 86) tells a curious
story. Apparently the ape, Vrsakapi, was the favourite of
Indra and injured property of Indra's wife; soundly beaten,
it was banished, but it returned, and Indra effected a recon-
ciliation. The hymn belongs to the most obscure of the Rgveda
and has been very variously interpreted,^^ even as a satire on
a contemporary prince and his spouse.

The same vein of satire has been discerned in a curious hymn
(vii. 103) where frogs, awakened by the rains, are treated as able
to bestow cows and long life. The batrachians are compared to
priests as they busy themselves round the sacrifice, and their
quacking is likened to the repetition of the Veda by the student.
The conception is carried out in a genial vein of burlesque, yet
it is very possible that it contains worship which is serious
enough, for the frogs are connected with the rain and seem to
be praised as bringing with their renewed activity the fall of
the waters.

We have seen gods conceived as of animal form and, there-



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 63

fore, in so far incarnate in these animals, not indeed perma-
nently, but from time to time. Accordingly, in the later ritual,
which seems faithfully to represent in this regard the meaning
of the Rgveda, the horse is not always or normally divine, but it
is so when a special horse is chosen to be sacrificed at the horse-
sacrifice and for this purpose is identified with the god. It is
possible, too, that direct worship of the cow and the frog (at
least in the rainy season) is recorded. The question then arises
whether the Vedic Indians were totemists. Did they conceive
a tie of blood between themselves and an animal or thing which
they venerated and normally spared from death, and which
they might eat only under the condition of some sacrament to
renew the blood bond? We can only say that there is no more
evidence of this than is implied in the fact that some tribal
appellations in the Rgveda are animal names like the Ajas, or
"Goats," and the Matsyas, or "Fishes," or vegetable like the
Sigrus, or "Horse-Radishes"; but we have no record that
these tribes worshipped the animals or plants whose name they
bear. Neither do we know to what extent these tribes were of
Aryan origin or religion. There may well have been totemistic
non-Aryan tribes, for we know that another worship which is
now accepted and bound up with the form of Siva — the
phallic cult — was practised in the time of the Rgveda, but by
persons whom it utterly disapproved and treated as hostile.^^

Beside the gods some priests and priestly families who are
more than real men figure in the Rgveda. Prominent among
these are the Bhrgus, whose name denotes "the Bright," and
who play the role of those who kindle Agni when he is discov-
ered by Matarisvan and establish and diffuse his use upon
earth. They find him in the waters; they produce him by fric-
tion and pray to him. They are invoked to drink soma with
all the thirty-three gods, the Maruts, the waters, and the As-
vins; they overcome the demon Makha and are foes of the his-
toric king Sudas. They are mentioned in connexion with
Atharvan, among others, and like them Atharvan is associated



64 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

with the production of fire, which he churns forth. Athravan
in the Avesta denotes "fire-priest," nor is there any doubt that
the Atharvan or Atharvans of the Rgveda are old fire-priests,
while the Bhrgus represent either such priests or possibly the
lightning side of fire itself. Yet another set of beings connected
with fire are the Angirases. Angiras as an epithet is applied to
Agni himself, and Angiras is represented as an ancient seer, but
the chief feat of the Angirases is their share in the winning of
the cows, in which act they are closely associated with Indra;
they are, however, also said to have burst the rock with their
songs and gained the light, to have driven out the cows and
pierced Vala and caused the sun to shine. They seem to bear
the traces of messengers of Agni, perhaps his flames, but they
may have been no more than priests of the fire-cult, like the
Atharvans. Like the Atharvans they are bound up with the
Atharvaveda, which is associated with that cult. The VirOpas
("Those of Various Form"), another priestly family, seem no
more than they in one special aspect.

A figure of great obscurity connected with Agni is that of
Dadhyaiic ("Milk-Curdling"), a son of Atharvan and a pro-
ducer of Agni. The Asvins gave him a horse's head, and with
it he proclaimed to them the place of the mead of Tvastr.
Again it is said that when Indra was seeking the head of the
horse hidden in the mountains, he found it in Saryanavant and
with the bones of Dadhyaiic he slew ninety-nine Vrtras. Dadh-
yanc opens cow-stalls by the power of Soma, and Indra gives
him cow-stalls. He has been interpreted as the soma because
of the allusion to curdled milk in his name, which again con-
nects him with the horse Dadhikra, but a more plausible view
is that he represents a form of lightning, the speed of which is
symbolized by the horse's head, while the thunder is his speech
and the bolt his bones. The legend is too fragmentary, how-
ever, to enable us to form any clear opinion of its significance.
Atri, another seer, is famed for being saved from burning in a
deep pit by the Asvins, who restored him with a refreshing



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 65

draught. But he also performed a great feat himself, for he
rescued the sun when it was hidden by the Asura, Svarbhanu,
and placed it in the sky. The same deed is also ascribed to the
Atris as a family, and they are the traditional authors of the
fifth book of the Rgveda, which often refers to them. Their
name denotes "the eater" and may itself once have belonged
to Agni, who is perhaps hidden in the guise of the blind seer
Kanva, a protege of the Asvins, from whom he received back
his lost sight.

Indra also has mythical connexions with the seers called
Dasagvas and Navagvas who aided him in the recovery of the
kine and whose names perhaps denote that they won ten and
nine cows respectively in that renowned exploit. Still more
famous is his friendship with Kutsa, to whom he gave constant
aid in his struggles with Susna; it was for him that Indra per-
formed the feat of stopping the sun by tearing off its wheel,
giving the other to Kutsa to drive on with. The myth is a
strange one and seems to be a confusion of the story of the
winning of the sun for men by Indra with his friendship for a
special hero whom he aided in battle. Yet in other passages
Kutsa appears in hostility to Indra. In the fight with Susna,
as the drought-demon, Indra also had the aid of Kavya Usanas,
who likewise made for him the bolt for the slaying of Vrtra.

An independent position is occupied by Manu, who stands
out as the first of men who lived, in contrast with Yama (like
himself the son of Vivasvant), who was the first of men to die.
He is par excellence the first sacrificer, the originator of the cult
of Agni and of Soma, and to him indeed Soma was brought by
the bird. Men are his offspring, and their sacrifices are based
on his as prototype. Just as he embodies the concept of the first
sacrificer, so the group of seven priests who play the chief part
in the ritual are personified as the seven seers who are called
divine and are associated with the gods.

Against the gods and other spirits invoked as beneficent are
set the host of the demons, or more often individual spirits who



66 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

are enemies both to gods and to men and whom the gods over-
throw for the benefit of men no less than of themselves. The
Asuras, as the demons are called throughout Indian literature
subsequent to the age of the Rgveda, have not yet attained that
position at the earliest period. Asura there means a spirit who
is normally benignant; In four passages only (and three of those
are In the tenth and latest book) are the Asuras mentioned as
demons, and In the singular the word has this sense only thrice,
while the epithet "slaying Asuras" Is applied once each to
Indra, Agnl, and the sun. Much more commonly mentioned
are the Panis, whose cows are won by the gods, especially Indra.
Their name denotes "Niggard," especially with regard to the
sacrificial gifts, and thus, no doubt, an epithet of human mean-
ness has been transferred to demoniac foes, who are accused of
having concealed even the ghee In the cow. Other human ene-
mies who rank as demons are the Dasas and Dasyus; and by a
natural turn of language Dasa comes to denote "slave" and Is
found In this sense In the Rgveda Itself. Besides the historical
Dasas, who were doubtless the aborigines, rank others who seek
to scale heaven and who withhold the sun and the waters from
the gods; and the autumnal forts of the Dasas can hardly have
been mere human citadels. While, however, the transfer of
name from men to demons Is clear, can we go further and equate
the Panis and Dasas to definite tribes, and see In them Parnlans
and Dahae, against whom the Vedic Indians waged warfare in
the land of Arachosla.? The conjecture Is attractive, but It
shifts the scene of VedIc activity too far west and compels us
to place the events of the sixth book of the Rgveda far distant
from those described In book seven, the Interest of which centres
in the Indian "Middle Country," the home In all probability
of the greater part of the VedIc poetry.

Much more common as a generic name of the adversaries of
the gods Is Raksas, either "the Injurious," or "That Which
Is to be Guarded Against." Rarely these demons are called
Yatus or Yatudhanas ("Sorcerers"), who represent, no doubt,



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD d-]

one type of the demons. They have the shape of dogs, vultures,
owls, and other birds; appropriating the form of husband,
brother, or lover, they approach women with evil intent; they
eat the flesh of men and horses and suck the milk of cows.
Their particular time of power is the evening and above all else
they detest sacrifice and prayer. Agni, the Fire, is especially
besought to drive them away and destroy them, and hence
wins his title of "Slayer of Raksases." With the Raksases in
later literature rank the Pisacas as foes of the fathers, precisely
as the Asuras are the enemies of the gods and the Raksases of
men, but the Rgveda knows only the yellow-peaked, watery
Pisaci, whom Indra is invoked to crush. Other hostile spirits
are the Aratis ("Illiberalities"), the Druhs ("Injurious"), and
the Kimldins, who are goblins conceived as in pairs.

There is no fixed terminology in the description of individual
demons, so that Pipru and Varcin pass both as Asuras and as
Dasas. By far the greatest of the demons is the serpent Vrtra,
footless and handless, the snorter, the child of Danu, "the
stream," the encompasser of the waters, which are freed when
Indra slays him. There are many Vrtras, however, and the
name applies to earthly as well as to celestial foes. Vala ranks
next as an enemy of Indra: he is the personification of the cave
in which the cows are kept, and which Indra pierces or cleaves
to free the kine. Arbuda again was deprived of his cows by
Indra, who trod him underfoot and cleft his head, and he seems
but a form of Vrtra. More doubtful is the three-headed son of
Tvastr, Visvarupa ("Multiform"), who is slain by Indra with
the aid of Trita, and whose cows, are taken. In his figure some
scholars have seen the moon, but his personality is too shadowy
to allow of any clear result. The overthrowing of the demon
Svarbhanu is accomplished by Indra, while Atri replaces in the
sky the eye of the sun which that demon had eclipsed. The
Dasa Susna figures as a prominent foe of Kutsa, a protege of
Indra, but his mythical character is attested by the fact that
by overcoming him Indra wins the waters, finds the cows, and



68 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

gains the sun. He is also described as causing bad harvests,
while his name must mean either "Scorcher" or "Hisser"; and
apparently he is a demon of drought. With him is sometimes
coupled Sambara, the son of Kulitara, the Dasa of ninety-nine
forts, whom Indra destroys, though he deemed himself a god-
ling. Pipru and Varcin also fall before Indra, the first with fifty
thousand black warriors, and the second with a hundred thou-
sand. As either is at once Asura and Dasa, perhaps they were
the patron gods of aboriginal tribes which were overthrown
by the Aryans; but their names may mean in Sanskrit "the
Resister" and "the Shining." Dhuni and Cumuri, the Dasas,
were sent to sleep by Indra for the sake of the pious Dabhiti;
and their castles were shattered along with those of Sambara,
Pipru, and Varcin. Dhuni means "Roarer," but Cumuri is
not, it would seem, Aryan, and he perhaps, with Ilibisa, Srbinda,
and others of whom we know practically nothing, may be ab-
original names of foes or gods hostile to the Aryans.

[Prometheus]

A more perplexing figure and one famous in later literature
is Namuci, which Indian etymology renders as "He Who Will
Not Let Go." He is at once Asura and Dasa, and in vanquish-
ing him Indra has the aid of NamI Sapya. The peculiarity of
his death is that his head is not pierced, like Vrtra's, but is
twirled or twisted with the foam of the waters, and that Indra
is said to have drunk wine beside him when the Asvins aided
and Sarasvati cured him.

The king of the dead is Yama, who gathers the people to-
gether and gives the dead a resting-place in the highest heaven
amid songs and the music of the flute. He is the son of Vivas-
vant, just as in the Avesta Yima is the son of Vivanghvant, the
first presser of the soma. His sister is Yami, and a curious
hymn (x. lo) contains a dialogue in which she presses her
brother to wed her and beget offspring, while he urges religious
objections to her suit. The story suggests what is confirmed by
the later Persian record that Yama and Yima were really the
twin parents of mankind. The Avesta also tells us that he lives



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, .\XD DEAD 69

in an earthly paradise which he rules, ^ and though this trait is
not preserved in the Rgveda, it is hinted at in the epic. His real
importance, however, is that he is the first man who died and
showed to others the way of death. Death is his path, and he
is once identified with death. As death the owl or the pigeon
is his messenger, but he has two dogs, four-eyed, broad-nosed,
one brindle {sahala) and one brown, sons of Sarama, who watch
men and wander about as his envoys. They also guard the
path, perhaps hke the four-eyed, yellow-eared dog of the
Avesta, who stands at the Cinvat Bridge to prevent e\dl spirits
from seizing hold of the righteous. Yet it may be that, as is
suggested by Aufrecht,^^ the object of the dogs' watch is to
keep sinful men from the world of Yama. It does not seem that
the souls of the dead have (as in the epic) a stream Vaitarani to
cross, though it has been suggested that in X. x\-ii. 7 ff. Saras-
vati is none other than this river.

Though Yama is associated with gods, especially Agni
and Varuna, and though there is an obvious reference to his
connexion with the sun in the phrase "the heavenly courser
given by Yama," still he is never called a god, and this fact
lends the greatest probability to the view that he is what he
seems to be, the first of men, the first also to die, and so the
king of the dead, but not a judge of the departed. Nevertheless,
his connexion with the sun and with Agni has suggested that
he is the sun, especially conceived as setting, or that he is the
parting day, in which case his sister is the night. The only
other theor>' which would seem to have any plausibility is that
he is the moon, for the connexion of the moon with the souls of
the dead is deeply rooted in the Upajiisads. Moreover, the
moon actually dies and is the child of the sun. This identifica-
tion, however, rests in large measure on the unproved hypothe-
sis that the few references in the Rgveda to Soma as associated
with the fathers are allusions to their abode in the moon.

It is in keeping with the belief in the heaven of Yama that
the burning of the body of the dead is the normal, though not



70 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

the exclusive, mode of disposing of the corpse. The dead were,
however, sometimes burled, for the fathers are distinguished as
those who are burned by fire and those who are not burned.
The dead was burned with his clothes, etc., to serve him In the
future life; even his weapons and his wife. It would seem, were
once incinerated, although the Rgveda has abandoned that
practice, of which only a symbol remains In placing the wife
and the weapons beside the dead and then removing them from
him. Agni bears the dead away, and the rite of burning is thus
In part like a sacrifice; but as "eater of raw flesh" In this rite
Agni Is distinguished from that Agni who carries the oblations.
With the dead was burned a goat, which Agni is besought to
consume while preserving the body entire. On the path to the
world of the dead Pusan acts as guide, and Savitr as conductor.
A bundle of fagots Is attached to the dead to wipe out his track
and hinder the return of death to the living. Borne along the
path by which the fathers went In days gone by, the soul
passes on to the realm of light and In his home receives a rest-
ing-place from Yama. Though his corpse Is destroyed by the
flame, still In the other world he is not a mere spirit, but has
what must be deemed a refined form of his earthly body. He
abides In the highest point of the sun, and the fathers are united
with the sun and its rays. The place Is one of joy: the noise of
flutes and song resounds; there soma, ghee, and honey flow.
There are the two kings, Varuna and Yama, and the fathers are
dear to the gods and are free from old age and bodily frailty.
Another conception, however, seems to regard the fathers as
being constellations In the sky, an Idea which Is certainly found
In the later Vedic period.

Those who attain to heaven are, above all, the pious men who
offer sacrifice and reward the priest, for sacrifice and sacrificial
fee are indlssolubly connected; ^^ but heroes who risk their
lives in battle and those who practise asceticism also win their
way thither. Of the fate of evil-doers we hear very little, and
it would appear that annihilation was often regarded as their



GODS OF EARTH, DEMONS, AND DEAD 71

fate. Yet there is mention of deep places produced for the evil,
false, and untrue, and Indra and Soma are besought to dash
the evil-doers into the abyss of bottomless darkness, while the
prayer is uttered that the enemy and the robber may lie below
the three earths. From these obscure beginnings probably
arose the belief in hell which is expressed in clear terms in the
Atharvaveda and which is later elaborated at length in the epic
and in the Puranas.

But the fathers are more than spirits living in peace after the
toils of life. They are powerful to aid and receive offering,
while they are invoked with the dawns, streams, mountains,
heaven and earth, Pusan, and the Rbhus. They are asked to
accord riches, offspring, and long life; they are said to have
generated the dawn and, with Soma, to have extended heaven
and earth. They especially love the soma and come for it in
thousands. Yet though they are even called gods, they are
distinguished from the true divinities; their path is the Pitr-
yana, or "Way of the Fathers," as contrasted with the Deva-
yana, or "Way of the Gods"; and the food given to them is
termed svadhd, in contrast with the call svdhd with which the
gods are invited to take their portion. The fathers are de-
scribed as lower, higher, and middle, and as late and early; and
mention is made of the races of Navagvas, Vairupas, Athar-
vans, Angirases, Vasisthas, and Bhrgus, the last four of which
appear also in the Rgveda as priestly families.

In one passage of the Rgveda (X. xvi. 3) an Idea occurs which
has been thought to have served in some degree as stimulating
the later conception of metempsychosis, of which there is no
real trace in that Samhitd. It is there said, in the midst of
verses providing for the dead being taken by Agni to the world
above,

"The sun receive thine eye, the wind thy spirit; go, as thy merit is,

to earth or heaven.
Go, if it be thy lot, unto the waters; go, make thine home in plants

with all thy members." ^^
VI — 6



72 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

The conception seems natural enough as an expression of the
resolution of the body into the elements from which it is de-
rived, just as in later Sanskrit it is regularly said of man that
he goes to the five elements when he dies; and it is, therefore,
much more likely that the phrase is thus to be interpreted than
that we are to see in it the primitive idea that the soul of the
dead may go into plants and so forth. The passage is almost
isolated, however, so that the sense must remain uncertain.



CHAPTER III
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS

WITHOUT exception the Brdhmanas presuppose the exist-
ence of a Rgveda Samhitd, in all probability similar
in essentials to the current text, and it is more than likely that
the other Samhitds — the Sdmaveda, the two schools of the
Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda — were composed after the
formation of the Samhitd of the Rgveda. Nor can there be
much doubt that, while the Rgveda shows many traces of being
the product of an age which was far from primitive, the later
Samhitds, in those portions which do not accord with texts
already found in the Rgveda, stand generally on precisely the
same level as the leading Brdhmanas, or at least the oldest of
these texts. The most essential characteristic of them all from
the point of view of mythology is that the old polytheism is no
longer as real as in the Rgveda. It is true that there is no ques-
tion of the actuality of the numerous gods of the pantheon, to
whom others are indeed added, but the texts themselves show
plain tendencies to create divinities of more imposing and
more universal power than any Vedic deity. There are three
figures in the pantheon who display the results of this en-
deavour, those of Prajapati, Visnu, and Rudra. Of these the
first is distinguished from the other two by the essential fact
that he is a creation not so much of popular mythology as of
priestly speculation, and the result, as was inevitable, is that
his permanence as a great god is not assured; while the two
other divinities, being clearly popular deities in their essence,
have survived to be the great gods of India throughout the



74 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

centuries with only so much change as has proved unavoidable
in the development of creed during hundreds of years.

The essential feature of Prajapati is that he is a creator, a
"Lord of Offspring," and offspring includes everything. Yet
there is no consistent account of creation in the Brdhmanas,
nor even in any one text. Nevertheless, the importance of the
concept Prajapati does appear in the fact that he is definitely
identified with Visvakarman, the "All-Creator" of the Rgveda
(x. 8i, 82), or with Daksa, who is at once son and father of
Aditi in that Samhitd (x. 72); and the later Samhitds repeat
the hymn of the Rgveda (x. 121) which celebrates the "Golden
Germ," Hiranyagarbha, and identify with Prajapati the in-
terrogative Ka ("Who"), which in that hymn heads each line
in the question, "To what god shall we oifer with oblation.''"
Among the variants of the story of the creation of the world
there is one which becomes a favourite and which assigns to
the waters or the ocean the first place in the order of exist-
ence. The waters, however, desire to be multiplied, and produce
a golden egg by the process of tapas, a term which, with its
origin in the verb tap, "heat," shows that the first conception
of Indian ascetic austerity centres in the process of producing
intense physical heat. From this egg is born Prajapati, who
proceeds to speak in a year, the words which he utters being
the sacred vydhrtis, or exclamations, "Bhuh," "Bhuvah,"
and "Svar," which become the earth, the atmosphere, and
the sky. He desired offspring and finally produced the gods,
who were made divinities by reaching the sky; and he also
created the Asuras, whereby came the darkness, which re-
vealed to Prajapati that he had created evil, so that he pierced
the Asuras with darkness, and they were overcome. The tale,
one of many, is important in that it reveals qualities which
are permanent throughout Indian religion: the story of crea-
tion is variously altered from time to time and made to ac-
cord with philosophical speculation, which resolves the waters
into a primitive material termed Prakrti; but the golden egg,



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 75

though spiritualized, persists in the popular conception, while
the place of the creation of the god is taken by the concept
of Purusa, or "Spirit," which is one of the names of Prajapati,
entering into the material Prakrti. The creative power of Praja-
pati exercised by himself is actually compared to child-birth
and serves as the precursor of the androgynous character of
the deity, which is formally expressed in the figure of Siva
as half man and half woman both in literature and in art.

Another conception of the creative activity of Prajapati is
that he took the form of a tortoise or a boar: thus in the Sata-
patha Brdhmana (VH. v. i. 5) we learn that he created off-
spring after he had assumed the form of a tortoise; and that
as the word kasyapa means "tortoise," people say that all
creatures are descendants of Kasyapa. This tortoise is also
declared to be one with the sun (Aditya), which brings Praja-
pati into connexion with the solar luminary, just as he is iden-
tified with Daksa, the father or son of Aditi, the mother of
Aditya. The same Brdhmana (XIV. i. 2. 11) tells us that the
earth was formerly but a span in size, but that a boar raised
it up, and that Prajapati, as lord of earth, rewarded him.
In the Taittiriya Samhitd (VII. i. 5. i) and the Taittiriya
Brdhmana (I. i. 3. i) this boar is definitely identified with
Prajapati, and the later Taittiriya Aranyaka states (X. i.
that the earth was raised by a black boar with a hundred arms.
From these germs spring the boar and tortoise incarnations
of Visnu in the epic and in the Purdnas. Yet another avatar
is to be traced to the story in the Satapatha Brdhmana (I. viil.
I. i) of the fish which saves Manu from the deluge, though
that text does not give the identification of the fish with Praja-
pati, which is asserted in the epic.

There is, however, another side to the character of Prajapati
which exhibits him in an unfavourable light. The Brdhmanas
tell that he cast eyes of longing on his own daughter, reproduc-
ing here, no doubt, the obscure references in the Rgveda (X.
Ixi. 4-7) to the intercourse of Dyaus ("Sky") with his daughter



76 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Usas ("Dawn"). The gods were deeply indignant at this
deed, and Rudra either threatened to shoot him, but was in-
duced to desist by being promised to be made lord of cattle; or
actually shot him, though afterward the wound thus caused
was healed. In the Aitareya Brdhmana (iii. 33) the story takes
a very mythic aspect: Prajapati turns himself into a deer to
pursue his daughter in the guise of an antelope (rohini), and
the gods produce a most terrible form to punish him, in the
shape, it is clear, of Rudra, though his name is too dangerous
to be mentioned; he pierces Prajapati, who flees to the sky
and there constitutes the constellation Mrga ("Wild Animal"),
while the archer becomes Mrgavyadha (" Piercer of the Mrga "),
the antelope is changed into Rohini, and the arrow is still to
be seen as the constellation of the three-pronged arrow.

Despite his creative activity, Prajapati was not immortal by
birth, for the conception of the Brdhmanas, as of India in later
days, does not admit of immortality won by birth alone. When
he had created gods and men, he formed death; and half of
himself — hair, skin, flesh, bone, and marrow — was mortal,
the other half — mind, voice, breath, eye, and ear — being
immortal. He fled in terror of death, and it was only by means
of the earth and the waters, united as a brick for the piling of
the sacred fire which forms one of the main ceremonies of the
sacrificial ritual, that he could be made immortal. But at the
same time Prajapati himself is the year, the symbol of time,
and by the year he wears out the lives of mortals, whether men
or gods. The gods, on the contrary, attained immortality from
Prajapati; they sought in vain to do so by many sacrifices,
but failed, even when they performed the piling of the fire
altar with an undefined number of fire-bricks, until at last
they won their desire when they followed the proper numbers
of the bricks. Death, however, objected to this exemption
from his control, for it left him without a portion; and the gods,
therefore, ordained that thenceforth no man should become
immortal without parting with his body, whether his immor-



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS ^J

tallty was due to knowledge or to works. Thus it happens
that after death a man may either be reborn for immortality,
or he may be born only to be fated to die again and again.
This is but a specimen of the various means by which the gods
escape death, for they are ever afraid of the Ender and must
adopt rites of many kinds to be freed from his control.

Since both the gods and the Asuras ("Demons") were the
offspring of Prajapati, it becomes necessary to explain why they
are differentiated as good and bad, and this is done in several
ways. In one case the Asuras kept sacrificing to themselves
out of insolence, while the gods sacrificed to one another; and
as a result Prajapati bestowed himself upon them, and sacrifice
became theirs only. In another version the gods adopted the
plan of speaking nothing but the truth, while the Asuras re-
sorted to falsehood: because of this for a while the gods became
weaker and poorer, but in the end they flourished, and so it
is with man; while the Asuras, who waxed rich and pros-
perous, like salty ground came to ruin in the end. The gods,
again, won the earth from the Asuras: they had only as much
of it as one can see while sitting, and they asked the Asuras
for a share; the latter replied that the gods could have as much
as they could encompass, whereupon the gods encompassed
the whole earth on four sides. Another legend accounts for
the differences in greatness of the gods by the fact that three
of them — Indra, Agni, and Siirya — desired to win superior-
ity, and for that purpose they went on sacrificing until in the
long run they attained their aim.

Prajapati might, it is clear, have become a much greater figure
had it not been for the fact that the philosophic spirit which
conceived him soon went beyond the original idea and trans-
formed the male, as too personal for the expression of the ab-
solute, into the neuter Brahman Svayambhii ("Self-Existent
Prayer"). It still remained possible to ascribe the origin of the
world to this Brahman and to account for it by ascetic austerity
on its part, but the way was opened for the development of the

[Prometheus]

78 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

pantheistic philosophy of the Upanisads. The change of name
is significant and indicates that a new side of thought has
become prominent: Brahman is the "prayer," or the "spell,"
which is uttered by the priest and it is also the holy power of
the prayer or the spell, so that it is well adapted to become a
name for the power which is at the root of the universe. When,
therefore, this Brahman is converted into the subject of as-
ceticism, it is clear that it is assuming the features of Prajapati,
and that two distinct lines of thought are converging into one.
The full result of this process is the creation of a new god,
Brahma, which is the masculine of the neuter impersonal
Brahman. Yet this new deity is not an early figure: he is found
in the later Brdhmanas, such as the Kausltaki and the Taittiriya,
as well as in the Upanisads and the still later Sutra literature,
in which he is clearly identified with Prajapati, whose double,
however, he obviously is. Was there, as has been suggested,
ever a time when Brahma was a deity greater than all others
in the pantheon.? The answer certainly cannot be in the un-
restricted affirmative, for the epic shows no clear trace of a
time when Brahma was the chief god, and the evidence of the
Buddhist Sutras, which undoubtedly make much of Brahma
Sahampati (an epithet of uncertain sense), is not enough to do
more than indicate that in the circles in which Buddhism found
its origin Brahma had become a leading figure. It is, in fact,
not unlikely that in the period at the close of the age of the
Brdhmanas, just before the appearance of Buddhism, the pop-
ular form of the philosophic god had made some progress to-
ward acceptability, at least in the circles of the warriors and
the Brahmans. But if that were the case, it is clear that this
superiority was not to be of long duration, and certainly it
never spread among the people as a whole.

Of these rivals of Brahma in popular favour Visnu shows
clear signs of an increasing greatness. The gods, as usual, were
worsted in their struggles with the Asuras, and for the purpose
of regaining the earth which they had lost they approached the



PLATE VI

Brahma

In the presence of the sacred fire a worshipper
presents an offering to Brahma. The four faces of
the god are said to have come into being from his
desire to behold the loveliness of his daughter, vv^ho
sought in vain to escape his amorous gaze. He
originally had a fifth head, due to the same cause,
but this was removed by Siva, either because of wrath
or because the head acquired such splendour through
knowledge of the Vedas that neither gods nor demons
could endure it. From an Indian painting of a ragirii
("sub-mode" of Indian music) in the collection
of the Editor.



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 79

Asuras, who were engaged in meting out the world, and begged
for a share in it. The Asuras with meanness offered in return
only so much as Visnu, who was but a dwarf, could lie upon;
but the gods accepted the offer, and surrounding Visnu with
the metres, they went on worshipping, with the result that
they succeeded in acquiring the whole earth. The story is
further explained by another passage in the same text which
refers to the three strides of Visnu as winning for the gods the
all-pervading power that they now possess. Besides these
notices in the Satapatha Brdhmana (I. ii. 5; ix. 3. 9) we are told
in the Aitareya Brdhmana (vi. 15) that Indra and Visnu had
a dispute with the Asuras whom they defeated and with whom
they then agreed to divide the world, keeping for themselves
so much as Vis^u could step over in three strides, these steps
embracing the worlds, the Vedas, and speech. Moreover,
while the boar, as a cosmogonic power, is still associated with
Prajapati and not with Visnu, traces of the latter's connexion
with the boar occur in a legend, based on the Rgveda, which is
told in the Black Yajurveda (VI. ii. 4) : a boar, the plunderer of
wealth, kept the goods of the gods concealed beyond seven
hills; but Indra, taking a blade of ^wi^-grass, shot beyond the
hills and slew the boar, which Visnu, as the sacrificer, took and
offered to the god. This passage indicates the source of the
strength of Visnu in the Brdhmanas: he is essentially identified
with sacrifice and with all that that means for the Brahman.
In this connexion a strange story is told of the way in which
Visnu lost his head. He was acknowledged by the gods to be
the sacrifice, and thus he became the most eminent of the
divinities. Now once he stood resting his head on the end of
his bow, and as the gods sat about unable to overcome him,
the ants asked them what they would give to him who should
gnaw the bow-string. When the deities promised in return for
such an action the eating of food and the finding of water even
in the desert, the ants gnawed through the string, which ac-
cordingly broke, and the two ends of the bow, starting asun-



8o INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

der, cut off the head of the god. The sound ghrm, with
which Visnu's head fell, became the gharma, or sacrificial
kettle; and as his strength dwindled away, the mahdvira, or
"pot of great strength," acquired its name. The gods pro-
ceeded to offer with the headless sacrifice, or makha, but as
they did not succeed they had to secure the restoration of its
head either by the Asvins or by the pravargya rite. It is very
curious that this should be so, for Visnu takes only a small
part in the ritual and is not closely connected with the Soma
offering, which is, after all, the chief feature of the sacrifice;
yet we must, no doubt, recognize that the god had a strong body
of adherents who secured the growing attention paid to him.
The same trait is seen in the relations of Visnu and Indra:
Visnu now appears as supporting Indra in his attack on Vrtra,
and we have assurances that Visnu is the chief of the gods. His
dwarf shape also assimilated him in cunning to Indra, for it is
doubtless nothing but a clever device to secure the end aimed
at, just as Indra changes himself, in the version of the Tait-
tiriya Samhitd (VI. ii. 4. 4), into a sdldvrkl (possibly a hyena)
and in that form wins the earth for the gods from the Asuras
by running round it three times. Otherwise the god develops
no new traits: his characteristic feature remains his threefold
stride which seems to have been accepted in the sense of strid-
ing through the three worlds, though the alternative version
of striding through the sky is also recognized.

The name Narayana is not yet applied to Visnu in the early
texts; yet we hear in the Satapatha Brdhmana (XIII. vi. i. i)
of Purusa Narayana who saw the human sacrifice and offered
with it, thus attaining the supremacy which he desired. Here
we have, of course, a reflex of the Purusa Sukta of the Rgveda^
the Purusa who there is offered up being transferred into a
Purusa who sacrifices another, and in this aspect Narayana is
closely akin to Prajapati. As early as the Taittiriya Jranyaka,
however, which can scarcely be placed later than the third
century B.C., the name of Narayana, together with those of



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 8i

Vasudeva and Narasirhha, is ascribed to Visnu, which shows
that at the end of the Vedic period the conception of Visnu
had been enlarged to include the traits which appear in the
epic, where Visnu is not identified merely with Narayana,
but also with the Vasudeva Krsna and is revealed as the
"Man-Lion," Narasimha.

None the less it is certain that in the Brdhmanas Siva Is
really a greater figure than Visnu, perhaps because he is a
terrible god, an aspect never congenial to Visnu. Thus he is
implored to confer long life, the triple life of Jamadagni and
Kasyapa and the gods, and taking his bow, clad in his tiger's
skin, to depart beyond the Miijavants in the far north. Still
more significant is the Satarudriya, or "Litany to Rudra by a
Hundred Names," which occurs in variant but nearly identical
versions in the several texts of the Yajurveda. He here appears
as many-coloured and as the god who slips away, even
though the cowherds and the drawers of water catch a glimpse
of him; he is treated as lord of almost everything conceivable,
including thieves and robbers. He is a mountain dweller and,
above all, is the wielder of a terrible bow; he has hosts of
Rudras who are his attendants and who, like himself, are
terrible; moreover he has his abode in everything. Other
names are given which are not merely descriptive — Bhava,
Sarva, Pasupati — as well as such as Nilagrlva ("Blue-
Necked") and Sitikantha ("White-Throated"). Of these names
we find Bhava and Sarva repeatedly connected in the Atharva-
veda, both as archers, and brought into conjunction with Rudra;
while in another passage of that Veda (xv. 5) appellatives
of the same deity under different forms are not merely
Bhava and Sarva, but also Pasupati, Ugra, Rudra, Mahadeva,
and Isana. In the Satapatha Brdhmana (L vii. 3. we are told
that Rudra is Agni and that among the eastern people his
name is Sarva, but that among the westerners (the Bahlkas)
he is called Bhava; and he is also termed "Lord of Cattle."
Another account (VL i. 3. 7) says that from the union of the



82 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

"Lord of Creatures" (Prajapati) with Usas was born a boy,
Kumara, who cried and demanded to be given names. Then
Prajapati gave him the name Rudra because he had wept
{rud)] and he also called him Sarva ("AH"), Pasupati ("Lord
of Cattle"), Ugra ("the Dread"), Asani ("Lightning"), Bhava
("the Existent"), Mahadeva ("the Great God"), and Isana
("the Ruler"), which are the eight forms of Agni. In slightly
different order the names are given in a passage of the Kausi-
taki Brdhmana (vi. i ff.) as Bhava, Sarva, Pasupati, Ugradeva,
Mahadeva, Rudra, Isana, and Asani; although here the origin
of the being thus named is traced to the joint action of Agni,
Vayu, Aditya, Candramas (the moon), and Usas in the form
of an Apsaras. Yet another account tells of the origin of
Rudra from the deity Manyu ("Wrath"), who alone remained
in Prajapati after all the other gods left him when he was dis-
solved by the effort of creation. This fact explains why Rudra
is so savage and requires to be appeased. He is the cruel one
of the gods, and he is the boar, because the boar is wrath.

There are many other traces of the dread nature of the god.
Thus in the ritual Rudra is so far identified with the Raksases,
Asuras, and fathers that after uttering his name a man must
touch the purifying waters; but, on the other hand, he is dis-
tinguished from them by the fact that his region is the north,
not the south, and that the call used in his service is the svdhd,
which is normal for the gods. While Nabhanedistha, the son
of Manu, was absent from home as a student, his brothers de-
prived him of any share in the paternal estate which they en-
joyed during the lifetime of their father. When he complained
of this to his parent, he was told to go to the Angirases, who
were sacrificing with the object of obtaining heaven, and to
make good his loss by gaining from them a boon for teaching
them the proper recitation on the sixth day. He did so, but,
when he was taking possession of the thousand cattle which
the Angirases gave as the reward, a man in black raiment
(Rudra) claimed the prize to be his own, declaring that whatever



PLATE VII

Kala-Siva

Siva is represented in his dread aspect of Kala
("Time " or *?*? Death "). From a sculpture at Pram-
banan, Java. After a photograph in the Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston.



THE NI-:\V YOUK

PUB-LIC LIBRARY



AvSTOR, LEN""
TILDBiN' l\.-l-
R



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 83

was left on the place of offering belonged to him. Nabhanedls-
tha returned to his father, only to be told that the claim was
just, though he was also advised how to obtain an abandon-
ment of it in its full extent. Moreover, as we have seen, it
was Rudra who was created from the dread forms of the gods
in order to punish Prajapati when he sinned against the laws
of moral order. Even the gods fear him; as Mahadeva he de-
stroys cattle; and he has wide-mouthed, howling dogs who swal-
low their prey unchewed. He is conceived as separated from
the other gods, and at the end of the sacrifice offering of the
remnants is made to him, while his hosts receive the entrails
of the victim. The Atharvaveda attributes to him as weapons
fever, headache, cough, and poison, although it does not iden-
tify him with these diseases. He seems most dangerous at the
end of the summer, when the rains are about to set in and when
the sudden change of season is most perilous to man and to
beast. It cannot be said, however, that there is any substantial
change in the character of the god from the presentation of it
in the Rgveda, except that his dreadful aspect is now far more
exaggerated. It is certainly not yet possible to hold that a
new deity has been introduced into the conception of Rudra,
whose close association with Agni is asserted at every turn,
Rudra being the fire in its dread form.

In the Yajurveda we find that Rudra has a sister, Ambika,
and we have the assurance of the Satapatha Brdhmana (II. vi.
2. 9) that the name was due to the fact that he is called Try-
ambaka ("Three-Eyed"). It is not until the last period of the
texts of the Brdhmanas {Kena Upanisad, iii. 25) that we find
Uma Haimavati, who is the wife of Siva in the later tradi-
tion; while in the Taittiriya Aranyaka, which is still later,
we find Ambika as a wife, not as a sister, and other names,
such as Durga and Parvati. This, however, is merely another
sign — one of many — of the contemporaneity of the later
portions of the Vedic literature with the development of the
epic mythology, so that in the Asvaldyana Srauta Sutra (IV.



84 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

vili. 19) we find added to Rudra's names those of Siva,
Sankara, Hara, and Mrda, all appellatives of Siva.

In addition to the strong evolution of monotheistic tenden-
cies in the shape of the worship of these three great divinities,
we must note the definite setting up of the Asuras as enemies
to the gods. This trend is a marked change from the point of
view of the Rgveda, where the term "Asura" normally applies
to the gods themselves and where the conflict of the demons
and the gods takes the form of struggles between individual
Asuras and gods rather than between the host of the Asuras and
the gods, both sprung from Prajapati, as the Brdhmanas often
declare. In this phenomenon, coupled with the fact that the
Iranians treated daeva, the word corresponding to the Vedic
deva, "god," as meaning "devil," it is natural to see a result
of hostile relations between the Iranian reformed faith of Zo-
roaster and the older Vedic belief; but the suggestion is insep-
arably bound up with the further question whether or not the
Rgveda and the Brdhmanas show traces of close connexion
with Iran. In support of the theory may be adduced the fact
that the Kavis who are popular in Indian literature are heretics
in the Avesta; while, on the other hand, Kavya Usanas, who
is the purohita of the Asuras in the Pancavimsa Brdhmana
(VII. V. 20) , is famed as Kavi Usan, or Kai Kaus, in Iran.^ Other
Asuras with names possibly borrowed from Iran are Sanda
and Marka (with whom is compared the Avestan mahrka^
"death"), Prahrada Kayadhava, and Srma; but the evidence
is much too feeble to afford any positive conclusion, and the
other explanation of natural development of meaning in both
countries is possible enough, for in the Veda Asura is specially
connected with the word mdyd, "power of illusion," and may
well have denoted one of magic, uncanny power, a sense which
would easily lead to an unfavourable meaning. The degrada-
tion of Asuras from gods to demons was doubtless helped by
the apparent form of the word as a negative of sura, from the
base svar, denoting "light," for by the time of the Upanisads



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 85

we meet the word sura denoting " a god," derived by this popu-
lar etymology from asura, which is really connected with asu,
"breath."

As regards the individual gods we find a clear change in the
conception of Varuna, who, with Mitra, is now equated in
several places with the night and the day respectively. More-
over in the Atharvaveda and the Brdhmanas there is a distinct
tendency to bring Varuna into close connexion with the waters,
who are his wives, in whom he is said to dwell, and to whom he
is related as Soma to the mountains. His power of punishing
the sinner, furthermore, becomes especially prominent in the
final bath which terminates the sacrificial ceremony as a nor-
mal rule and by which the sacrificers release themselves from
Varuna's noose. At the horse sacrifice this bath takes the
peculiar form that a man is driven deep into the water and then
banished as a scapegoat; and, since the appearance of the scape-
goat is to be similar to that of the god, we learn that Varuna
was in this connexion conceived as bald-headed, white, yellow-
eyed, and leprous. The one festival which is specially his,
the Varunapraghasa, is again one of expiation of sin. Yet
in his relation to the sacrifice Varuna does not appear in any
of the moral splendour of the Rgveda, and he is manifestly
tending, as in the epic, to sink to the level of a god of the
waters, without special ethical quality.

In the other Adityas there is little change; but the number is
now usually either eight or (more often) twelve, which is to
be final for later times, when the term is not as often used
generically in a sense wide enough to cover all the gods, a
use which leads to the epic view that every deity is a child
of Aditi. One enumeration of eight gives Varuna, Mitra, Arya-
man,Bhaga,Amsa, Dhatr, Indra,andVivasvant. The introduc-
tion of Indra is interesting, and the Maitrdyanl Samhitd (H. i.
12) makes him a son of Aditi, but the connexion is not insisted
upon. Mitra decidedly recedes even from the small place
which he holds in the Rgveda, perhaps in accordance with



86 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Vani^a's loss of position. Aryaman's nature as a wooer and
prototype of wooers is frequently mentioned, and two Arya-
mans occur in one phrase which may suggest a close alliance
with Bhaga, whose character as the deity who gives good for-
tune seems to be definitely implied in a legend of the Satapatha
Brdhmana (I. vii. 4. 6), according to which he is blind. Amsa
and Daksa almost disappear, although the latter is once iden-
tified with Prajapati, and the gods bear the epithet "having
Daksa for father," where his purely abstract character is
clearly seen. Vivasvant, who is several times called an Aditya,
is said to be the father of men.

[Prometheus]

From the Atharvaveda onward there is a distinct develop-
ment of Siirya as the sun-god par excellence, whether under
that name or under that of Aditya; and the Aitareya Brdhmana
(iii. 44) explains that there is no real rising or setting of the
sun, for it always shines, though it reverses its sides, so that
the shining one is now turned to and now from the earth,
whence comes the discrepancy of day and night. The same
Brdhmana is responsible for the view that the distance between
the earth and the heaven is that of a thousand days' journey
by horse, while the Pancavim'sa Brdhmana reduces it to the
height of a thousand cows standing one on top of another, a
mode of reckoning which has modern parallels. Naturally
enough, with the growth of importance of Surya as such
Savitr tends more and more to become the god of instigation,
and his solar character is not marked. Pusan is quite often
mentioned, but his nature is not appreciably altered.

Of the other denizens of the skies Dyaus is more evanescent
than ever, but Dyavaprthivl occupy a fair place in the ritual
and receive frequent shares in the offering. Usas steadily di-
minishes in importance, thus continuing a devolution which
had begun in the R.gveda itself, and no new mythology is made
regarding her. On the other hand, the Asvins are popular
gods, and the references to their activity in the Rgveda are
supplemented by further details, the most remarkable of these



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 87

stories being that of the rejuvenating of Cyavana, which is
told in the Jaiminlya Brdhmana and elsewhere. The account
of the Satapatha (IV. i. 5) is that when the Bhrgus or Angirases
went to heaven, Cyavana was left behind, old and decrepit.
Saryata Manava came to his place of abode, and the youths
of the tribe mocked the old man, who in revenge brought dis-
cord among the clan; but, when Saryata learned this, he pro-
pitiated the seer by the gift of his daughter Sukanya and hastily
departed to avoid further chance of discord. The Asvins,
however, wandering among men, came upon Sukanya, and after
seeking to win her love, agreed to make her husband young
again if she would tell them of a defect which she alleged in
them. They made Cyavana bathe in a pool whence he emerged
with the age desired, and in return she told them that they were
incomplete because the gods shut them out from the sacrifice.
They accordingly went to the deities, and by restoring the head
of the sacrifice obtained a share in it. The reason for their
exclusion from the sacrifice is interesting and is given re-
peatedly: they wandered too much among men to be pure, a
sign of the growing decline of the physician's standing as a
member of the highest class. Though the Asvins share in the
soma, the special offerings in their honour are surd (a kind of
brandy) and honey, and the Asvina ^astra, which is sung to
them in the Atiratra form of the Soma sacrifice, is recited by
the priest in the posture of a flying bird.

Of the gods of the atmosphere Indra is still in the height of
his power and develops an elaborate mythology in which the
old motives are rehandled. Of the new stories regarding him
the most noteworthy is that of his struggle with Tvastr's
son Visvarupa, whom he slew, and with Vrtra, who was created
by Tvastr from the remains of the soma left undrunk by
Indra. Visvarupa's avenger became very powerful and mas-
tered Agni and Soma, all sciences, all fame, and prosperity;
and gods, men, and fathers brought him food. But Indra at-
tacked Vrtra, and having obtained the aid of Agni and Soma
VI — 7



88 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

by the promise of a share In the cake at the sacrifice, he van-
quished Vrtra, who apparently then became his food. The
story of the death of Visvarupa, the three-headed son of Tvastr,
is variously told, but it is clear that Indra was afraid that this
demon was likely to betray the gods to the Asuras, whence
he cut off his three heads, which turned into different birds.
Nevertheless by this act Indra had been guilty of the sin of
slaying a Brahman, and, since all beings cried out upon him
for his deed, he besought the earth, trees, and women, each of
which took to themselves a third of the blood-stain which had
fallen on the deity. The slaying of Tvastr's son, however, is
only one of the sins of Indra known to the Brdhmanas: it is
said that he insulted his teacher Brhaspati; gave over the
Yatis, who are traditionally sages, to the hyenas; and slew the
Arurmaghas or Arunmukhas, of whom no further data are
recorded. For these sins, according to the Aitareya Brdhmana
(vi. 28), he was excluded by the gods from the soma, and with
him the whole of the warrior race; but later he managed to se-
cure the soma for himself by stealing it from Tvastr, though, if
we may believe one account, he paid dearly for the theft by
being seriously affected by the drink and requiring to be cured
by the Sautrdmanl rite.

Other new features of the Indra myth are the prominent
parts played by other gods in the conflict with Vrtra: the ap-
pearance of Agni and Soma as helpers is paralleled by the stress
laid on the aid of Visnu or of the Maruts. Moreover we hear
now of the consequences of his slaying of the dragon, which
is no longer regarded merely as a triumph. Indra himself flees
to the farthest distance, thinking that he has failed to lay his
opponent low, and all his strength passes from him and en-
ters the water, the trees, the plants, and the earth; or, again,
he feels that he has sinned in his action, which is parallel
to his disgrace for slaying Visvarupa. All the gods save the
Maruts abandon him at the decisive moment; and, when Vrtra
has been struck, it is Vayu who is sent to see if he is really dead.



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 89

On the other hand, the figures of Trita Aptya, Aparh
Napat, Aja Ekapad, and Ahi Budhnya become fainter and
fainter. Trita naturally leads to the invention of a legend ac-
cording to which there were three brothers, Ekata, Dvita, and
Trita, two of whom threw the third into a well. The gods of
the wind also, Vayu and Vata, remain unchanged, but Matari-
svan assumes the distinct new feature of a wind-god pure and
simple without trace of any connexion with the fire. Parjanya
as the rain is still recognized just as he is in the Buddhist texts,
and we find the importance of the waters duly acknowledged
by the many spells of various kinds devised to secure rain, In
one of which the colour black Is used throughout to resemble the
blackness of the clouds whence the rain must descend. In close
association with the waters stand the frog, which is used in
several cooling rites; the ants, who exact, In return for their
action In gnawing the bow-string which cuts off the head of
Visnu, the privilege of finding water even in the desert; many
plants; and the "Serpent of the Deep," Ahi Budhnya.

The Satarudriya litanies show us the Importance of the nu-
merous Rudras, who must be propitiated no less than Rudra
himself, and give them countless places of origin. They
dwell on earth, as well as In the atmosphere and In the sky,
and vex men on the roads and at sacred places, besides dis-
turbing them in the platters from which they eat. The ritual
of the householder provides that blood is to be offered to them
in all four directions, and they are described sometimes as
snakes and elsewhere as noisy eaters of raw flesh, etc. Despite
their connexion with the great god, they are no more than
imps and trolls, and It Is no high honour for the Maruts to
receive the same name as "the children of Rudra," as they
are called even in the Jigveda. Besides their special associa-
tion with Indra the Maruts now appear regularly as the sub-
jects among the gods, quite like the Vaisyas among men, and
they are said to dwell in the asvattha, or Ficus religiosa, which
is the tree normally found in an Indian village enjoying the



90 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

honour accorded in England to the oak. It may easily be that
it was the kinship of these gods, as the common folk of
heaven, to the Vaisyas of the village that helped the theolo-
gians to locate them there, while the popular imagination could
readily fancy that the storm-gods dwelt in the tree through
which their winds would whistle in time of tempest.

Of the terrestrial divinities Soma has converted himself into
a celestial deity by his definite identification with the moon,
which begins In the latest hymns of the Rgveda and is quite
common in the later VedIc literature; though of course the
plant itself still remains sacred and in a sense is Soma, just as
it was in the earlier period. There are few legends told re-
garding Soma which are of any interest, the most important
being that which concerns the buying of it. It is an essential
part of the ritual that the soma-plant should be represented
as bought; but that the seller should be reprobated, and his
price afterward even taken away from him. In this has been
seen a representation, one of the beginnings of Indian drama, of
the obtaining of the soma from the Gandharvas who, in the
Yajurveda, guard it. The price is a cow, which is, therefore,
called the soma-purchase cow, but in the Brdhmanas It appears
that Vac ("Speech") was the price with which the gods bought
the soma from the Asuras in days gone by, when she lived
with the Asuras, and that the cow is the modern representa-
tive of Vac. The reason why the gods had to purchase soma
with Vac was that the Gandharvas were fond of women and
would, therefore, prefer a woman as a price; but the divinities
parted with Vac only on the distinct secret agreement that
when they desired her she would return again, and she did so.
Hence in this world it is legitimate to repurchase the cow paid
for the soma, though normally a cow so given could not be
taken back again. It may be that the legend contains some
faint indication that it was necessary to buy the plant from the
hill tribes among whom it grew. But if Soma is the moon,
the moon and Soma also are Identified in whole or in part



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 91

with the demon Vrtra : in one passage (I. vi. 3.17) the Satapatha
Brdhmana divides the dead Vrtra into two parts, one of which
goes to make the moon, and the other (the belly) to trouble
mankind. The conception is also found in the Maitrdyanl
Samhitd (H. vii. , and it is clear proof that terror of the moon
was not unknown to the Indians of the Vedic period. The
moon as Candramas often appears with the sun, and the
Aitareya Brdhmana (viii. 24) — though in a passage which
may be a priestly fiction rather than a genuine belief — states
that the moon is born from the sun. A more important con-
ception, which figures largely in the eschatology of the Upani-
sads, is that the sun is the light of the gods and the moon the
light of the fathers, from which it is an easy step to the doc-
trine that the righteous dead dwell especially in the moon.
On the other hand, in its more primitive sense Soma still figures
as the heavenly drink in the story of his descent to earth, which
is now attributed to the Gayatrl metre; and since this metre
is used at the morning pressing of the soma and is closely as-
sociated with Agni, we thus have a variant of the legend which
is seen in the Rgveda (iv. 27) when Soma is brought down by
the eagle. The Gayatri is shot at by the archer who guards the
soma, and a nail of her left foot, being cut off, becomes a
porcupine, while the goat is born of the fat that drips from the
wound. The other metres, Jagati and Tristubh, failed in the
effort to obtain the soma, being wearied by the long flight to
heaven.

Agni does not change his essential features in the later Vedic
period, but his character is more fully set out. Thus while
the Rgveda mentions only one of the three fires, the Garhapatya,
the later texts name also the Ahavanlya and the Daksinagni;
and the three are brought into conjunction wilh the earth, the
sky, and the atmosphere respectively, besides being associated
with the three categories of men, gods, and fathers, and with
Agni, Siirya, and Vayu. It is a question how far in these equa-
tions we have to see mere priestly schematism: it has been sug-



92 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

gested that in the connexion, which is thus shown, of the
fathers and the wind (Vayu) we have a trace of the concep-
tion (which is certainly not the normal one of this period) that
the fathers live in the wind; and the Narasamsa has been re-
garded as a name of the fire for the fathers. The fire naturally
and inevitably serves to show the establishment of Aryan
civilization, and a famous story of the eastward movement of
the Aryans in the Satapatha Brdhmana (I. iv. i) tells of the
fire which Videgha Mathava ^ and Gotama Rahugana fol-
lowed and which introduced the Aryan beliefs into new lands.
Yet the Brdhmanas show no trace of any evolution of a public
as opposed to a private fire of the king. There is, however, a
new development of Agni, for his numerous aspects are fre-
quently described by epithets, such as "Lord of Vows,"
"Desire," or "the Pure"; and the ritual prescribes different
offerings to these several sides of his nature. This fact lends
plausibility to the view that the origin of Brhaspati ("Lord
of Devotion") lies in a feature of Agni which was developed
more completely into an independent deity. Brhaspati him-
self assumes in this period two of his later characteristics. He
is declared to be "Lord of the Metres," and also "Lord of
Speech" (Vacaspati), which is his prominent aspect in post-
Vedic literature, and he becomes the deity of the constellation
Tisya; while in post-Vedic literature he is the regent of the
planet Jupiter, although the suggestion that he is himself a
planet is inadmissible.^ The worship of the planets does not
appear for certain in any Vedic text, and is clearly set forth
for the first time in the law-book of Yajfiavalkya in the third
century a.d.

Though there is no real increase in the position of the god-
desses in this period, the wives of the gods obtain a definite
part in the ritual. Some importance attaches to Ida, the deity
of the oblation, who is described as the daughter of Manu,
with whom he re-created the world after the deluge, although
she also passes as the child of Mitra and Varuna. Aditi loses



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 93

anything of mystery which may have been hers in the Rgveda
and is constantly identified with the cow at the sacrifice. Sara-
svatl appears as in the Rgveda, and sacrifices on the banks of
the Sarasvati of special holiness are mentioned in the Brdh-
manas and described at length in the ritual texts. She is also
seen, however, in a new light: when Indra is compelled to resort
to the Sautramani to be cured from the ill efi"ects of drinking
soma, she, together with the Asvins, aids his recovery; and the
fact that her instrument was speech seems to have given rise
to her identity with Vac ("Speech"), as asserted by the
Brdhmanas, as well as to her later elevation to the rank of a
goddess of learning and culture. The prominence of the moon
in the mythology of the time may explain the appearance of the
names Anumati and Raka, Sinlvali and Kuhu as the deities
presiding over the two days of full and new moon respectively.
Of the gods who may be called personifications of abstrac-
tions Tvastr remains active as the creator of the forms of
beings and the causer of the mating of animals. His chief
feature is his enmity with Indra, who steals the soma when
Tvastr seeks to exclude him from it and slays his son Visvarupa
of the three heads, who has been interpreted (though with little
likelihood) as the moon, but who seems to be no more than
proof of the cunning of Tvastr's workmanship. His creation
of Vrtra for vengeance on Indra is likewise a failure. His ulti-
mate fate, as shown by the Kausika Sutra, is to be merged in
the more comprehensive personality of Prajapati, and the
same doom befalls Dhatr, Visvakarman, and Hiranyagarbha.
The Atharvaveda, with that curious mixture of theosophy and
magic which characterizes it, creates some new gods, such
as Rohita ("the Sun"), Kala ("Time"), Skambha (the "Sup-
port" which Prajapati used for fashioning the world), Prana
("Breath"), the Vratya (possibly Rudra under the guise of
non-Brahmanical Aryans), and others. The really important
figures thus created, however, are Kama and Sri. The former,
"Desire," perhaps has its origin in the cosmogonic hymn of



94 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

the Rgveda (x. 129) where Desire is said to be the first seed
of Mind. This god has arrows, and though he is a cosmic power,
he is to reappear as a lesser god in a Sutra and in the epic
period. The other deity is Sri ("Prosperity"), who, as we know
from the Buddhist sculptures, was a prominent divinity in the
following age.

It is a natural sign of growing formalism that the gods should
now be grouped in classes : the eight Vasus (now in connexion
with Agni, not with Indra), the eleven Rudras, and the twelve
Adityas, corresponding to earth, air, and sky respectively.
The Chdndogya Upanisad shows a further progress in adding
two new groups — the Maruts with Soma, and the Sadhyas
with Brahman. The Maruts are now usually distinguished from
the Rudras, although they are still connected with them.

When we pass to the minor deities of the period of the Brdh-
manas, we find a certain development clearly marked in the case
of the Gandharvas and the Apsarases. The solitary Gandharva,
who is only thrice made plural in the J^gveda, is now regularly
transformed into a body of beings who can be placed together
with the gods, the fathers, and the Asuras. Visvavasu, how-
ever, is still frequently mentioned, and appears to have been
conceived as one of the chief guardians of the soma, by whom,
indeed, in one account he was stolen. Soma is, therefore, be-
sought to elude him in the form of an eagle in the Taittiriya
Samhitd (I. ii. 9. i), and the Taittiriya Aranyaka (I. ix. 3)
tells us that Krsanu, the archer who shot at the eagle which
carried the soma to earth, was a Gandharva. Yet in one account
the gods succeed in buying the soma from the Gandharvas
by means of Vac, for the Gandharvas are lovers of women;
with the Apsarases they preside over fertility, and those who
desire ofi'spring pray to them. The Atharvaveda declares them to
be shaggy and half animal in form, though elsewhere they are
called beautiful. The Apsarases now appear in constant con-
junction with water, both in rivers, clouds, lightning, and
stars; while the Satapatha Brdhmana describes them as trans-

[Prometheus]

THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 95

forming themselves into aquatic birds. Yet they have other as-
sociations also. They inhabit trees, especially the banyans
and the sacred fig-tree, in which their lutes and cymbals re-
sound; the Gandharvas live with them in these and other
trees of the fig kind and are asked to bless a wedding proces-
sion as it passes them. Dance, song, play, and dicing are their
sports; but they have a terrible side also, for they cause mad-
ness, so that magic is used against them.

But though the Apsarases are especially the loves of the
Gandharvas, they can be won by mortal man, and among other
names which are famous later are mentioned Menaka, Sakun-
tala (from whom sprang the Bharata race), and Urvasi. The
union of the latter with Pururavas is told in the ^atapatha
Brdhmana (XL v. i). She married him solely on the condition
that she should never see him naked; but the Gandharvas,
envying the mortal the enjoyment of her society, devised a
stratagem which made Pururavas spring from his couch beside
Urvasi in such haste that he deemed it delay that he should put
his mantle round him. Urvasi sees him illuminated in a flash
of lightning and vanishes; but he seeks her all over the earth
— a theme which is developed in detail in Kalidasa's famous
drama — and finds her at last swimming in a lotus lake with
other Apsarases in swan-shape. Urvasi reveals herself to him
and consents to receive him for one night a year later; and
when he returns at the appointed time, he learns from her
how to secure from the Gandharvas the secret of ritual by
which he himself becomes one of their number.

The Rbhus show no such change of nature; and though
they are more clearly brought into connexion with the Rtus,
or Seasons, than in the ^gveda, they are still regarded as being
not really of pure divinity, but akin to mankind, and as re-
ceiving only with difficulty a share in the draughts of soma
which are reserved for the gods proper. On the other hand, we
have, especially in the Sutras which represent the last stage
of the Vedic religion, constant references to many other minor



96 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

spirits, of whom Vastospati ("the Lord of the House"), Kset-
rasya Pati ("the Lord of the Field") Slta ("the Furrow"), and
Urvara ("the Ploughed Field") are the natural divinities of a
villager. Yet the place of plants and trees is still very slight,
though the Atharvaveda uses plants freely for medicinal and
magic purposes and ascribes a divine character to them, and
the blessing of trees is, as we have seen, sought in the mar-
riage ritual, while offerings are made both to trees and to plants.
In the Buddhist scriptures and stories special prominence is,
on the other hand, given to tales of divinities of plants, trees,
and forest. A distinct innovation is the direct worship of ser-
pents, who are classified as belonging to earth, sky, and at-
mosphere, and who doubtless now include real reptiles as well
as the snake or dragon of the atmosphere, which is found in the
Rgveda. The danger from snakes in India is sufficient to explain
the rise of the new side of the ritual: the offerings made to
them, often of blood, are to propitiate them and reduce their
destructive power, and Buddhism is also supplied with charms
against them. Isolated in comparison with the references to
the snakes are those to other vermin, such as worms or the
king of the mice or ants, all of which occasionally receive offer-
ings. A serpent-queen appears as early as the Brdhmanas and
is naturally enough identified by speculation with the earth,
which is the home of the snakes. Not until the Asvaldyana
Grhya Sutra (II. iv. i), however, do we hear in the Vedic religion
of the Nagas ("Serpents"), who are prominent in the epic.
A new form of being in the shape of the man-tiger is also found,
but not the man-lion. The boar is mentioned in cosmogonic
myths as the form assumed by Prajapati, who is also brought
into conjunction with the tortoise as the lord of the waters.
The cow is now definitely divine and is worshipped, but she
is also regarded as identical with Aditi and Ida. Tarksya,
the sun-horse, is named here and there, and Aristanemi, who
occurs in connexion with him, is a precursor of Aristanemi as
one of the Tirthakaras of the Jains.



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 97

Many other spirits of dubious character and origin are also
found, among whom Nirrti ("Decease") is the most promi-
nent: sacrifice is frequently made to her, and black is the colour
appropriate for use in such offerings; while dice, women, and
sleep, as evil things, are brought into association with her.
At the royal consecration the wife who has been degraded in
position is regarded as her representative, and in the house
of such a woman the offering to Nirrti is made. Other deities are
much less important and appear chiefly in the Sutras^ which
show their connexion with the life of the people. Thus the
Sdnkhdyana Grhya Sutra (ii. 14) describes an offering which,
besides the leading gods, enumerates such persons as Dhatr,
Vidhatr, Bharata, Sarvannabhuti, Dhanapati, Sri, the night-
walkers, and the day-walkers. The Kausika Sutra (Ivi. 13)
names Udankya, Sulvana, Satrurhjaya, Ksatrana, Mar-
tyumjaya, Martyava, Aghora, Taksaka, Vaisaleya, HahahGhu,
two Gandharvas, and others. The "Furrow," Sita, is replaced
by the four, Sita, Asa, Arada, Anagha; and so on. We even
find the names of Kubera,* the later lord of wealth, and
Vasuki, the later king of snakes, but only in Sutras and, there-
fore, in a period later than that of the Brdhmanas proper.
They serve, however, to show how full of semi-divine figures
was the ordinary life of the people, who saw a deity in each
possible form of action. Naturally, too, they regarded as divine
the plough and the ploughshare and the drum, just as in the
Ilgveda, and the ritual is full of the use of symbols, such as
the wheel of the sun, the gold plate which represents the sun,
and the like.

In the world of demons the chief change in the Brdhmanas
is the formal separation of Asuras and gods. Vrtra, whose
legend is developed, remains the chief Asura; but the story of
Namuci is also elaborated, stress being laid on the use of lead
in the ritual, apparently to represent the weapon (the foam
of the sea) with which Indra destroyed him when he had under-
taken to slay him neither with wet nor with dry. The myth of



98 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Vala is distinctly thrust to the background, though the epic
constantly celebrates the slayer of Vala and Vrtra; Susna
now appears as a Danava who was in possession of the
soma. The Raksases are the more prominent fiends: they
are dangerous to women during pregnancy; in the shape of
dog or ape they attack women; they prowl round the bride
at the wedding, so that little staves are shot at their eyes.
Often, though human in figure, they are deformed, three-
headed, five-footed, four-eyed, fingerless, bear-necked, and
with horns on their hands. They are both male and female;
they have kings and are mortal. They enter man by the
mouth when he is eating or drinking; they cause mad-
ness; they surround houses at night, braying like donkeys,
laughing aloud, and drinking out of skulls. They eat the flesh
of men and horses and drink the milk of cows by their magic
power as ydtudhdnas, or wizards. Their time is the coming of
night, especially at the dark period of new moon; but in the
east they have no power, for the rising sun dispels them. The
Pisacas are now added to the numbers of demons as a regular
tribe: they eat the corpses of the dead; they make the living
waste away and dwell in the water of the villages. Magic
is used both against Pisacas and against Raksases, the latter
of whom are especial enemies of the sacrifice, and against whom
magic circles, fire, and imprecations of all kinds are employed.
More abstract are the Aratis, or personifications of illiberality.
Other spirits, like Arbudi in the Atharvaveda, can be made to
help against an enemy in battle. A few individual names of
demons are new, and although Makha, Araru, Sanda, and
Marka (the Asuras' purohitas) are all ancient, a vast number
are added by the Grhya Sutras — Upavira, Saundikeya,
Ulukhala, Malimluca, Dronasa, Cyavana, Alikhant, Animisa,
Kimvadanta, Upasruti, Haryaksa, Kumbhin, Kurkura, and
so forth. None of these has individual character: the spirits
of evil which surround human beings at every moment, and
particularly at times like marriage, child-birth, the leaving of a



THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS 99

spiritual teacher, sickness, and disease, are of innumerable
names and forms, and the prudent man mentions all he can.

The sages of the Rgveda are, on the whole, treated more
and more as mere men in subsequent literature and their myth-
ology shows little development. Nevertheless, Manu, the son
of Vivasvant, who is the hero of the tale of the deluge, is a
prominent figure throughout the entire period. One day, as
he was washing his hands, a small fish happened to be in the
water, and at its request he spared its life in return for a prom-
ise to save him in the flood which the fish predicted. In due
course the fish which Manu carefully brought up, first in a ves-
sel and then in a trench, grew great and was allowed to go
back to the sea, after warning its benefactor to build himself
a ship. In course of time the flood came, and Manu made a
ship which the fish dragged until it rested on the northern
mountain, whereupon the flood gradually subsided, and Manu,
going down from the heights, with Ida, the personification of
the sacrifice, renewed the human race. Manu now counts also
as the first lawgiver, for whatever he said was, we are
told, medicine. Atri likewise remains famous for his conflict
with the Asura Svarbhanu who eclipses the sun, while the
Angirases and the Adityas are distinguished by their ritual
disputes, in which, however, the Adityas win the day and first
attain heaven.

In the world of the dead Yama is still king, and we hear of
his golden-eyed and iron-hoofed steeds; but he is also duplicated
or triplicated by the abstract forms of Antaka ("the Ender"),
Mrtyu ("Death"), and Nirrti ("Decease"), which are placed
beside him; and Mrtyu becomes his messenger. The heaven
in which the virtuous dead rest is depicted in the same colours
as in the Rgveda: it is made clear that in it men reunite with
wives and children, and that abundance of joy reigns there.
Streams of ghee, milk, honey, and wine abound; and bright,
many-coloured cows yield all desires. There are neither rich
nor poor, powerful nor downtrodden; and the joys of the blest



956'4j)(^^



lOO INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

are a hundred times greater than the joys of earth. Those who
sacrifice properly are rewarded by unity with and identity of
abode with the sun, Agni, Vayu, Indra, Varuna, Brhaspati,
Prajapati, and Brahma, though this identification is common
only in the later Brdhmanas. On the other hand, we hear now of
hell: the Atharvaveda tells of it as the Naraka Loka (in con-
trast with the Svarga Loka, the place of Yama), the abode of
female goblins and sorceresses, the place of blind or black
darkness. It is described in slight detail in its horror in that
Veda (v. 19) and fully in the Saiapatha Brdhmana (XI. vi. i),
where Bhrgu, son of Varuna, sees a vision of men cutting up
men and men eating men. The same idea, which is clearly one
of retribution in the next world for actions in this, is paralleled
in the Kausltaki Brdhmana (xi. 3), where we learn that the
animals which man eats in this world will devour him in
yonder world if he has not a certain saving knowledge, though
how the reward or the penalty is accorded does not clearly ap-
pear. The Satapatha Brdhmana (VI. ii. 2. 27; X. vi. 3. i)
holds that all are born again in the next world and are rewarded
according to their deeds, whether good or bad; but no state-
ment is made as to who is to decide the quality of the acts.
In the Taittirlya Aranyaka (VI. v. 16) the good and the un-
truthful are said to be separated before Yama, though there is
no suggestion that he acts as judge; but the Satapatha (XL ii.
7. 33) introduces another mode of testing, namely, weighing
in a balance, though by whom the man is weighed is not de-
clared. Possibly this is a reference to some kind of ordeal.

In the Upanisads and in the legal text-books we find a new
conception — that of rebirth after death in the present, not
in yonder, world. It has no clear predecessor in the Brdhmanas
proper, but it is hinted at in the doctrine of the later Brdh-
manas that after death a man may yet die over and over again,
from which the doctrine of metempsychosis is an easy step;
while a further idea, also with some amount of preparation in
the Satapatha Brdhmana, regards the man who attains true



'in:. 3r.v ii-:iiv

PUI>LIC LIBFtARY



ASTin. LBNOX AND




(a)



PLATE VIII

A AND B

Tortures of Hell

Yudhisthira, the only one of the Pandavas to attain
alive to heaven, was submitted to a final test before
being permitted to join his brothers and the other
heroes of old. Through illusion he was caused to see
the tortures of the damned, for " hell must necessarily
be seen by all kings" {Mahabharata^ xviii. 27 ff.).
Passing through the repellent horrors of decay,
Yudhisthira stands aghast at the torments which he
beholds. Christian influence is evident in the use
of crucifixion as a punishment, and also in the figure
of the hero's guide, the messenger of the gods.
From a painting in the Jaipur manuscript of the
Kavcmnamah (a Persian abridgement of the Maha-
hharatd). After Hendley, Memorials of the feypore
Exhibition, iv. Plates CXXXII, CXXXIII.




(b)



VS'I ^'^"^^









THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE BRAHMANAS loi

knowledge of the nature of the Absolute as thereby winning
freedom from rebirth, and union at death with the Absolute.
These teachings are mingled in the Upanisads with the older
tenet of recompense in heaven and hell, and a conglomerate is
evoked which presents itself in the shape that those souls
which do not attain full illumination (or even all souls) go
after death to the moon, whence some proceed eventually to
Brahma, while others are requited in the moon and then are
born again, thus undergoing in each case a double reward.
One version, that of the Brhaddranyaka Upanisad (vi. 2),
refers to the existence of a third place for the evil. Later
this is rendered needless by the conception that the rebirth
is into a good or a bad form, as a Brahman, warrior, or house-
holder, or as a dog, pig, or Candala (member of the lowest
caste). The third place mentioned in the Chdndogya Upanisad
(v. 10) now becomes entirely meaningless, but that does not
prevent its retention. A new eflFort to unite all the views is
presented by the Kausltaki Upanisad (i. 2), which sends all
souls to the moon and then allows some to go by the path of
the gods to Brahma; while the others, who have been proved
wanting, return to earth in such form as befits their merit,
either as a worm, or fly, or fish, or bird, or lion, or boar, or
tiger, or serpent, or man, or something else. The law-books
show the same mixture of ideas, for, while heaven and hell are
often referred to as reward and punishment, they also allude
to the fact of rebirth. The intention is that a man first enjoys
a reward for his action in heaven, and then, since he must be
reborn, he is reincarnated in a comparatively favourable posi-
tion; while in the other instance after punishment in hell he
is further penalized by being born in a low form of life.

The fathers with Yama are, no doubt, conceived as in heaven,
but we hear also of fathers in the earth, atmosphere, and sky,
and various classes are known, such as the Umas, Urvas, and
Kavyas. The belief that the fathers are to be found in all three
worlds is natural enough as regards earth and heaven, and the



I02 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

souls of the dead In other mythologies are often connected
with the winds. In the Veda the only other reference to this
which presents itself is the possibility that the Maruts may
be the souls of the dead, regarded as riding in the storm-
winds, but for this there Is no clear evidence. A group of the
fathers, the "Seven Seers," is Identified with the stars of the
Bear, doubtless for no better reason than the similarity of
Tsi, "seer," and rksa, "bear," although from time to time the
idea occurs that the souls of the pious are the stars in heaven.



CHAPTER IV
THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC

IN the epic we find in developed and elaborate form a con-
ception which is entirely or at least mainly lacking in the
Vedic period, a doctrine of ages of the world which has both
striking points of contrast with and affinity to the idea of the
four ages set forth in Hesiod. In the Greek version, however,
the four ages are naively and simply considered as accounting
for all time,^ while in the Indian they are only the form in
which the Absolute reveals Itself, this revelation being followed
by a period of reabsorption, after which the ages again come
into being. In the process of evolution the first, or Krta, age
is preceded by a dawn of four hundred years and closes in a
twilight of equal duration, while its own length is four thousand
years. ^ This is the golden age of the world, in which all is
perfect. Neither gods nor demons of any kind yet exist, and
sacrifices are unknown, even bloodless offerings. The Vedas
themselves have no existence, and all human infirmities, such
as disease, pride, hatred, and lack of mental power, are absent.
None the less, the four castes — the priest, the warrior, the
husbandman, and the serf — come into being with their special
marks and characteristics, though this diff'erentiation is modi-
fied by the fact that they have but one god to worship, one
Veda to follow, and one rule. In this age men do not seek the
fruit of action, and accordingly they are rewarded by ob-
taining salvation through absorption in the absolute. On the
twilight of the Krta age follows the dawn of the Treta, which
lasts for three hundred years, while the age itself continues three
thousand and ends in a twilight of three hundred years. In




Fig. 2. The Churning of the Ocean

The gods (Siva, Visnu, and Brahma) stand to the left of Mount Mandara, which rests
on a tortoise (Visnu himself in his Kurma, or Tortoise, avatar); to the right are the
demons; and with the serpent Vasuki as the cord the two opposing sides twirl the
mountain to churn the ambrosia from the ocean of milk. In the lower part of the picture
are the various "gems" incidentally won in gaining the amrta. After Moor, Hindu
Pantheon, Plate XLIX.

[Prometheus]

THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 105

this epoch virtue declines by a quarter from its full perfection
in the golden age. Sacrifices come into existence, and with
sacrifices the attaining of salvation, not as before by mere
meditation and renunciation, but by the positive actions of
offering and generosity. Moreover, duty is still strictly per-
formed, and asceticism is normally practised. In the next age,
the Dvapara, the bull of justice stands on two feet only, for
another quarter of virtue has departed. The Vedas are multi-
plied to four, yet many men remain ignorant of them alto-
gether or know but one or two or three. Ceremonies increase,
and treatises on duty multiply, but disease and sin grow rife,
and sacrifice and asceticism alike are performed not, as for-
merly, disinterestedly, but in hope of gain. It is in this age
that the need for marriage laws first makes itself felt, and the
dawn and twilight alike shrink to two hundred years, while
the age itself is reduced to two thousand. A dawn of only a
hundred years serves to introduce the Kali and worst of the
ages, when virtue has but one leg to stand upon, when religion
disappears, when the Vedas are ignored, when distress pre-
vails, and when the confusion of the castes begins. But the
age lasts only a thousand years, and its brief twilight of a hun-
dred years is a prelude to the absorption of all in the Absolute
Spirit. Seven suns appear in the heaven, and what they do not
burn is consumed by Visnu in the form of a great fire, the de-
struction being made complete by a flood. A new Krta age
cannot commence to dawn before the lapse of a period equal to
the thousandfold repetition of the total of the ages, that is,
twelve million years. In this complete reabsorption the gods
no less than men are Involved, to be reborn again in the course
of the ages.

The doctrine of the ages is only an emphatic assertion of the
idea which underlies all the mythology of the epic, that the
gods themselves are no longer independent eternal entitles,
but, however glorious and however honoured, are still, like
man, subject to a stronger power. Indeed, In the epic the



io6 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

gods are chiefly conspicuous by reason of their impotence to
intervene in the affairs of men: with the exception of Visnu
they can merely applaud the combatants and cannot aid or
succour them, in strange contrast with the gods of Homer.
There are real gods, however, as well as phantoms, and their
existence is clearly revealed to us in the legend of the churning
of the ambrosia which is preserved in the Rdmdyana (i. 45;
vii. i) and, in a more confused and fragmentary form, in the
Mahdbhdrata. The gods and Asuras were sprung from one
father, Kasyapa Marica, who married the daughters of Daksa
Prajapati, the gods being the children of Aditi, while the
Asuras (the children of Diti) were the older. They lived in
happiness in the Krta age, but being seized with the desire to
attain immortality and freedom from old age and sickness,
they decided that they should seek the ambrosia which was
to be won by churning the milky ocean, and accordingly they
set about this task by making the serpent Vasuki the churning
rope and Mount Mandara the churning stick. For a thousand
years they churned, and the hundred heads of Vasuki, spitting
venom, bit the rocks, whence sprang the deadly poison called
Halahala, which began to burn all creation, gods, men, and
Asuras alike. They fled to Rudra, "the Lord of Cattle,"
"the Healer" (Sankara), and at the request of Visnu, who
hailed him as chief of the gods, he drank the poison as though
it were the ambrosia. The churning then proceeded, but Mount
Mandara slipped into hell. To remedy the disaster Visnu lay
in the ocean with the mountain on his back, and Kesava pro-
ceeded to churn the ocean, grasping the top of Mandara with
his hand. After a thousand years there appeared the skilled
physician Dhanvantari, then the Apsarases, who were treated
as common property by the gods and the Asuras, and next
Varuna's daughter. Sura, whom the sons of Aditi married, thus
attaining the name of Sura, while those of Diti declined to
marry, whence their name of Asura (here popularly etymolo-
gized as "Without Sura"). Then came out the best of horses,



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 107

Uccalhsravas, and the pearl of gems, Kaustubha, and the am-
brosia itself. But over it strife arose between the half-brothers,
so that in the end Visnu by his magic power {mdya) secured
the victory of the gods and bestowed upon Indra the sover-
eignty of the three worlds.

Such in essence is the attitude of the epic to the Vedic gods,
who appear as feeble creatures, unable to overpower the Asuras
or to effect their purpose of winning immortality by the use of
the ambrosia until they are aided by Siva and Visnu, though
in the genealogy these two are no more divine than the others.
Indra himself who, as the god of the warrior, might have been
expected to retain some degree of real authority, can hold his
position only by the favour of Visnu and can exercise his
shadowy sway merely as a vicegerent. Beside Siva and Visnu
no Vedic god takes equal rank, and the only power which
can for a moment be compared with these two deities Is
Brahma, the personal form of the absolute Brahman, a god,
that is to say, of priestly origin and one who could never have
any real hold on the mythological instinct. Visnu and Siva,
on the contrary, were too real and popular to sink into the
deities of priestly speculation, and round them gathers an
evergrowing body of tales.

It is characteristic of the feeble personality of Brahma
that he finds a connexion with the classes of the gods only
through identification with Tvastr, who counts as one of the
twelve Adityas, the narrower group of the children of Aditi
and Kasyapa Prajapati. In reality, however, he Is a personifica-
tion of the abstract Absolute which is often described In the
Mahdhhdrata. It is eternal, self-existing, invisible, unborn,
unchanging, imperishable, without beginning or end; from it
all is sprung, and It is embodied in the whole universe; yet in
itself it has no characteristics, no qualities, and no contrasts.
As all springs from It, so Into It all Is resolved at the end of the
four ages. Thus it can be identified with Time and with Death,
both of which, like Itself, absorb all things and bring them to



io8 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

nothingness. Into the Brahman the Individual self may be
resolved when it casts aside even the apprehension of its own
Identity with the Brahman, abandons all resolves of body or
mind, and frees Itself from every attachment to objects of
sense. When a man withdraws all his desires as a tortoise all
its limbs, then the self sees the self in Itself; when a man fears
no one and, when none fear him, when he desires nothing and
has no hatred, then he attains the Absolute. Personified as
Brahma, the Absolute appears as a creator, as PrajapatI, the
maker of the worlds, the grandfather of the worlds. He creates
the gods, seers, fathers, and men, the worlds, rivers, oceans,
rocks, trees, etc. In other passages he created first the Brah-
mans called Prajapatis — endowed with radiance like the sun —
truth, law, penance, and the eternal Brahman, customs, puri-
fications, the Devas, Danavas, Gandharvas, Daityas, Asuras,
Mahoragas, Yaksas, Raksasas, Nagas, Pisacas, and the four
castes of men. It is characteristic that the Brahman is here
created by the personal Brahma who is sprung from Itself.
Brahma also appears as only one — and that the highest — of
the Prajapatis, and elsewhere we find an enumeration of
seven Prajapatis who are called his spiritual sons, Marici,
Atri, Anglras, Pulastya, Pulaha, Kratu, and Vaslstha, even
longer lists being given elsewhere.

Beyond this creative power mythology has little to say of
Brahma. Above heaven lie his beautiful worlds, and his as-
sembly hall stands on Mount Meru. Yet, as accords with one
who created the world by virtue of his magic power of Illusion,
the form of his palace is such that it cannot be described:
neither cold nor hot, it appears to be made of many brilliant
gems, but It does not rest upon columns; it surpasses In
splendour the moon, the sun, and fire, and In it the creator
ever dwells. Brahma's wife Is Savltri, and swans are harnessed
to his chariot, which is swift as thought. His altar Is called
Samantapaficaka, and It was from a great sacrifice which he
performed on the top of Mount Himavant (roughly to be Iden-



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 109

tified with the Himalayas) that there came into being a crea-
ture with the colour of the blue lotus, with sharp teeth and
slender waist, of enormous strength, at whose birth the earth
trembled, and the ocean rose in great waves. This being was
Asi ("the Sword"), born to protect the gods, and it was given
to Rudra by Brahma. Rudra handed it on to Visnu, and he to
Marici, whence it came to the seers, from them to Vasava and
the world guardians, and then to Manu in the shape of the law.

As contrasted with the Vedic gods Brahma shows some of
the features of the greatness of a creator. Thus in time of
distress the gods are apt to turn to him and to seek his advice,
but he yields in importance to the two great gods, Siva and
Visnu, even though here and there in the Mahdbhdrata phrases
occur which suggest that these gods owed their origin to him,
or rather to the Absolute, of which he is the personal form.
When worshipped as the greatest of gods, he himself responds
by adoration of Visnu, who, though sprung from the Brahman,
has created him as a factor in the process of world creation;
and it is stated that Brahma was born from the lotus which came
into being on the navel of Visnu as he lay sunk in musing.
Once only in the epic is the doctrine of a triad of Brahma,
Visnu, and Siva laid down in a passage of the Mahdbhdrata
(iii. 18524), where it is said: "In the form of Brahma he creates;
his human form [i.e. Visnu] preserves; in his form as Rudra
[i.e. Siva] will he destroy; these are the three conditions of
Prajapati." This view, however, is foreign to the epic as a
whole and to the Rdmdyana, and the creator-god is at most
regarded as one of the forms of the two great sectarian divinities.

It accords well with the faded position of the creator-god
that the account of Indian religion which we owe to the Greek
writer Megasthenes (about 300 b.c.) makes no mention of him
as a great god, even when it tells us of two deities who are
identified with Dionysos and Herakles and in whom we must
recognize Siva and Visnu, rather than, as has also been sug-
gested, Visnu and Siva, though the possibility of the double



no INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

identification reminds us that there is much in common in the
two Indian as in the two Greek gods themselves. The divinity
whom Megasthenes calls Dionysos was at home where the vine
flourished in the Asvaka country, north of the Kabul river,
in the north-west country north of Delhi, and further north
in Kasmir; and his worship also extended east to Bihar and
even as far as Kalinga in the south-east, and was prevalent
round Gokarna in the west. Herakles again was worshipped
in the Ganges valley and had as chief seats of his cult the towns
of Methora and Kleisobora, in which have been seen (doubt-
less rightly) Mathura and the city of Krsna, both on the
Jumna, the former being the capital of the Yadavas, among
whom Krsna ranked as hero and god. Consistent with this is
the fact that Megasthenes ascribes to Herakles a daughter
Pandale, for this accords with history, since the Pandyas of
southern India, whose connexion with the Pandavas of the epic
was recognized, were worshippers of Krsna, and In their coun-
try a second Mathura is found.

In the epic Siva, the ten-armed, dwells on the holy Himavant,
on the north side of Mount Meru, In a lovely wood, ever full of
flowers and surrounded by divine beings; or, again, he lives on
Mount Mandara. He is said to be born of Brahma, but also
from the forehead of Visnu. His hair flashes like the sun, and
he has four faces which came into being when he was tempted
by Tllottama, a beautiful nymph created by Brahma from all
that was most precious In the world. As she walked round the
great god, a beautiful countenance appeared on each side: of
the four, those facing east, north, and west are mild, but that
which faces south Is harsh; with that which faces east he rules,
with that which faces north he rejoices in the company of his
wife Uma; that which faces west is mild and delights all beings,
but that which faces south is terrible and destructive. He has
three eyes which shine like three suns, while, again, it is said
that the sun, moon, and fire are his three eyes. His third eye
he owes to the playful act of Uma. One day In jest she suddenly



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC iii

placed her hands over his eyes, whereupon the world was
plunged in utter darkness, men trembled from fear, and all
life seemed to be extinct, so that, to save the world, a third
eye flamed forth on the god's forehead. His neck is blue, whence
his name Nilakantha, either because in the churning of the
ocean he swallowed the poison produced by the biting of the
rocks by the teeth of the serpent Vasuki when he was being
used as the churning string, or because Indra hurled his thun-
derbolt at him, or because he was bitten by the snake which
sprang from Usanas's hair.

Siva is clothed in skins, especially those of the tiger; but his
garments are also described as white, while his wreaths, his
sacred cord, his banner, and his bull are all said to be white,
and on his head he bears the moon as his diadem. His steed is
his white bull, which serves likewise as his banner and which,
according to one legend, was given to Siva by Daksa, the divine
sage; it has broad shoulders, sleek sides, a black tail, a thick
neck, horns hard as adamant, and a hump Hke the top of a
snowy mountain. It is adorned with a golden girth, and on its
back the god of gods sits with Uma. Siva's weapons are the
spear — named Pasupata because of his own title of Pasupati,
or "Lord of Creatures" — the bow Pinaka, the battle-axe, and
the trident. With the spear he killed all the Daityas in battle
and with it he destroys the world at the end of the ages; it is
the weapon which he gave to the heroic Arjuna after his con-
test with him. It was with his axe, which he gave to Rama,
that Parasu-Rama ("Rama of the Axe") annihilated the race
of warriors. His bow is coloured like the rainbow and is a
mighty serpent with seven heads, sharp and very poisonous
teeth, and a large body; and the weapon never leaves his
hand. The trident served to slay king Mandhatr and all his
hosts; it has three sharp points, and from it Siva derives his
names of Sulin, Sulapani, and Suladhara ("Owner of the
Spear," "With the Spear in his Hand," and "Spear-Holding").

As a ruler over Mount Himavant Siva is rich in gold and is



112 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

hailed as a lord of gold, wearing mail of gold, and golden-
crested, and is a close friend of Kubera, lord of treasures.

The names of Siva are countless and his shapes many: of the
former now one thousand and eight, now one thousand, are
mentioned, but names and forms alike simply illustrate either
the mild or the terrible aspect of his nature. The terrible
form is declared to be fire, lightning, and the sun; the mild
form is Dharma (or "Justice"), water, and the moon; or,
again, the terrible form is fire, and the mild is Soma as the
moon. His sovereign power gives him the name Mahesvara
("the Great Lord"); his greatness and omnipotence cause him
to be styled Mahadeva ("the Great God"); and his fierceness,
which leads him to devour flesh, blood, and marrow, is the
origin of the name Rudra; while his desire to confer blessings
on all men makes him to be termed "the Auspicious" (Siva),
or "the Healer" (Sahkara). As the devastating power which
finally destroys the universe he is Hara ("the Sweeper Away"
of all beings). Moreover he sends disease and death; the
deadly fever is his deputy, and he is actually personified as
death and disease, destroying the good and the bad alike.
As Kala ("Time") he is lord of the whole world, and as Kala
("Death") he visits impartially the young, children, the old,
and even those yet unborn. As Kala he is the beginning of the
worlds, and the destroyer; on the instigation of Kala everything
is done, and all is animated by Kala. He created the whole
world indeed, but at the end of the ages he draws it in and
swallows it; yet all that is thus absorbed is born again, save
only the wise who understand the origin and disappearance of
all things and so attain full union with him. He is the "Lord
of Creatures" (Pasupati), a term not merely denoting "the
Lord of Cattle" as a pastoral deity, but signifying also the com-
plete dependence of all human souls upon him.

Other epithets which proclaim his might are Isana ("the
Ruler"), Isvara ("the Lord"), Visvesvara ("the Lord of All"),
Sthanu ("the Immovable"), and Vrsa ("the Bull"), a name



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 113

which is also significant of the close connexion and partial iden-
tification of the god with the beast which he rides. The terrible
aspect of his character is likewise reflected in the nature of his
appearance: his ears are not merely large, but are shaped like
spears or pegs (sankti), or basins (kumbha); his eyes and ears
are frightful; his mouth is mis-shapen, his tongue is like a
sword, and his teeth are both large and very sharp.

On the other hand, in his mild form as Siva or Sankara, he
is friendly to all beings, bears a mild countenance, and re-
joices over the welfare of men. He is gay and is fond of music,
song, and dance; indeed, he is said to imitate the noise of the
drum with his mouth and to be skilled in song and dancing and
music, arts to which his followers are also addicted.

In the Mahdbhdrata (xiii. 7506) part of his mild form Is
reckoned to be his practice of the asceticism of a brahmacdririy
or chaste Brahmanical scholar, but his self-mortification is
distinctly of the horrible type and sets an example for the
worst excesses of the Indian fakir. The most fit place for
sacrifice which he can find in his wanderings over all the earth
is none other than the burning ghat, and he is believed to be
fond of ashes from the funeral pyre and to bear a skull in his
hand. He lives in burning ghats, goes either shaved or with
uncombed hair, is clothed in bark or skins, and is said not only
to have stood on one foot for a thousand years, but also to
endure heavy penances on Mount Himavant. All this is done
for the good of the world, but it affords a precedent for the
most painful renunciation and the most appalling austerities,
features which endear Siva to the Brahman as the ideal of the
true yogin, or ascetic.

It is characteristic of the god that the tales of him dwell
rather on his power than on his gentleness, although there is a
striking exception in a legend told in the Mahdbhdrata (xii.
5675 if.) which shows both Siva and his consort in a tender light.
After a long time a Brahman had been blessed with a son, but
the child soon died and was carried to the burning place. A

[Prometheus]

114 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

vulture, attracted by the lamentations of the relatives, bade
them depart, saying that no useful purpose would be served by
their staying, since all must die; but just as they were prepar-
ing to follow his advice, a black jackal appeared, and declaring
that the child might perhaps revive, asked them if they had
no love for it. They went back, and while the two animals con-
tinued their dispute Sankara, instigated by Uma, appeared
on the scene with eyes full of tears of pity, and as a boon be-
stowed on the child a hundred years of life, rewarding the
vulture and the jackal as well. In striking contrast with this
is the famous tale of Daksa's sacrifice. At the end of the Krta
Yuga the gods sought to perform a sacrifice and prepared it
in accordance with the prescriptions of the Vedas, while Praja-
pati Daksa, a son of Pracetas, undertook the ofi"ering and per-
formed it on Himavant at the very place where the Ganges
bursts forth from the mountains. The gods themselves de-
cided how the sacrifice was to be apportioned, but as they did
not know Rudra well they left him without a share. In anger
Rudra went to the place of offering, bearing his bow, and
straightway the mountains began to shake, the wind ceased to
blow, and the fire to burn, the stars quenched their light in
fear, the glory of the sun and the beauty of the moon departed,
and thick darkness filled the air. Siva shot right through the
sacrifice, which took the shape of a hart and sought refuge in
heaven together with Agni; in his wrath he broke the arms of
Savitr and the teeth of Pusan, and tore out the eyes of Bhaga.
The gods hastily fled with the remains of the preparations for
the sacrifice, pursued by Siva's mocking laughter. The string
of his bow, however, was rent by a word spoken by the gods,
and the deities then sought him and strove to propitiate him.
Mahadeva suffered his anger to be appeased, hurled his bow
into the sea, and restored to Bhaga his eyes, to Savitr his arms,
and to Pusan his teeth, and in return received the melted butter
as his share of the offering. Such is the tale in its simplest form
{Mahdbhdrata, x. 786 ff.), but it is a favourite theme of the



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 115

priests and is related elsewhere with differing details, while
both epics often refer to it.

Not only was Siva wedded to Uma, the younger daughter
of Himavant, but he was fated to be connected with her elder
sister Gahga, the sacred Ganges. King Sagara of Ayodhya
(the modern Oudh) sought to perform a horse sacrifice as sym-
bol of his imperial sway; but the horse was stolen, and his sixty
thousand sons sought for it. In their wanderings they came
upon the sage Kapila, whom they unwisely accused of having
been the thief, whereupon in just anger he transformed them
into ashes. Kapila was really Visnu, who had undertaken the
duty of punishing the sons of Sagara for piercing the earth
in their efforts to find the horse which Indra had taken away.
When the sons did not return, Sagara sent his grandson by
his first wife, KesinI, to seek them, and he discovered their
ashes; but, just as he was about to sprinkle them with water
as the last funeral rites, he was told by Suparna that he must
use the waters of the Ganges. He returned with the horse, thus
enabling Sagara to complete his sacrifice, but the king died after
a reign of thirty thousand years without having succeeded in
his quest for the water. His grandson and great-grandson like-
wise failed to accomplish the task, but his great-great-grandson
Bhaglratha by his asceticism secured from Brahma the fulfil-
ment of his desire, subject to the condition that Siva would
consent to receive the stream on his head, since the earth could
not support its weight. By devotion to Siva Bhaglratha then
proceeded to win his consent to this, and at last, after a long
period, the god granted him the boon which he desired. When,
however, the deity received the stream in his hair, it sought to
hurl him into the lower world, and in punishment for its misdeed
Siva made it wander for many years through his long locks, until
finally, at the earnest request of Bhaglratha, he allowed it to de-
scend on earth in seven streams, the southernmost of which is
the earthly Ganges. The gods flocked to see the wonderful sight
of the descent of the river and to purify themselves in the waters.



Ii6 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

The stream on earth followed the chariot of Bhaglratha until
it came to the offering place of Jahnu, who swallowed it and was
induced by the gods to allow it to issue forth again through his
ears only on condition that it should count as his daughter.
Bhaglratha then conducted the river into the underworld,
where he sprinkled the ashes of the sons of Sagara with it and
received the praise of Brahma for his great deed.

Siva performed another mighty feat when he made the
deity of love to lose his body. As the lord of the gods was en-
gaged in deep meditation, Kama approached him to induce him
to beget with Parvati a son powerful enough to overthrow the
Daitya Taraka, who had conquered the worlds. In deep anger
Siva with a glance of his eye burned Kama to ashes, whence
the god of love is called Ananga, or "Bodiless." The incident
is only briefly referred to in the Mahdbhdrata (xii. 6975-80)
and owes its fame to its handling by Kalidasa in the famous
epic Kumdrasambhava, which tells of the birth of the war-god
as the result of the love excited by the hapless Kama in Siva,
despite the penalty paid by him.

The first in rank among Siva's martial exploits was his de-
struction of the three citadels of the Asuras in the wars which
they waged against the gods. These citadels are already known
to the Brdhmanas as made of iron, silver, and gold, one in each
of the three worlds, but the epic places them all in heaven, and
makes Vidyunmalin, Tarakaksa and Kamalaksa their respec-
tive lords. Even Indra could not pierce these citadels, where-
fore the gods sought the aid of Rudra, who burned the forts
and extirpated the Danavas. Among the Asuras he had one
special foe in Andhaka, whom he slew; and he also had an en-
counter with the sage Usanas, who by means of his ascetic
power deprived Kubera of his treasure. In punishment Siva
swallowed him and not only refused to disgorge him until he
had long been entreated to do so, but even then would have
slain him had it not been for the intervention of Devi. A more
poetic tale is the encounter of Siva with Arjuna: Arjuna, the




Fig. 3. The Propitiation of Uma, or Devi

The goddess is seated in lier temple on the summit of a mountain and is adored by
(l) ^iva, (2) Visnu, (3) Brahma, (4) Indra, (5) Agni, and another deity. Above to
the left is Surya ("the Sun") with his charioteer Aruna, and to the right is Candra
("the Moon"). The mountain, which is shown to be the haunt of wild beasts, is the
home of various kinds of ascetics. After Moor, Hindu Pantheon, Plate XXXI.



ii8 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

noblest of the five Pandavas, by his ascetic practices created
panic among the gods, so that Siva, assuming the form of a
mountaineer, or Kirata, went to Arjuna and picked a quar-
rel with him over a Raksasa in boar-form whom Arjuna killed
without permitting the Kirata to share in the booty. The two
fought, finally wrestling with each other, and Arjuna fainted
in the god's embrace, to be revived by the deity and to receive
from him the divine weapons which were to stand him in good
stead in the great war which forms the main theme of the
Mahdhhdrata. At Siva's bidding Arjuna was borne to the
heaven of Indra, where he remained for five years, learning the
use of the celestial weapons.

Closely akin to Siva is his wife Uma, the younger daughter
of Himavant, whose gift of her to Rudra cost him the loss of
all his jewels through a curse of Bhrgu, the sage of the gods,
who came too late to seek her in marriage. As "Daughter of
the Mountain" she is also ParvatI, and Gaurl ("the Radiant
White One"), and Durga ("the Inaccessible"). The fancy of
the poet, however, derives this last epithet from the fact that she
guards her devotees from distress {durga), and she is proclaimed
as the refuge for those lost in the wilds, wrecked in the great
ocean, or beset by evil men. Yet her normal aspect is terrible:
she lives in trackless places, she loves strife and the blood of
the Asura Mahisa, and in battle she conquers Danavas and
Daityas. She is Kali or Mahakall, as her spouse is Kala, and
she is called the deep sleep of all creatures. She is also said to
live on Mandara or the Vindhya, and to be of the lineage of the
cowherd Nanda, a daughter of Yasoda and a sister of Vasudeva,
a descent which is clearly intended to connect her closely with
Visnu. Like her husband she has four faces, but only four arms,
she wears a diadem of shining colours, and her emblem is the
peacock's tail.

In the Mahdhhdrata sectarian influence has exalted both
Siva and Visnu at the expense of the other: it seems clear that
the Vaisnavas first exercised their influence on the text, but



PLATE X

Marriage of Siva and Parvati

The union of the deities is honoured by the presence
of the chief divinities. Visnu and LaksmT stand on the
left; on the right the Trimurti ("Triad") of Brahma,
Visnu, and Siva is seen. Gandharvas and Apsarases
float above in the sky, and among the gods Visnu
(riding on Garuda), Vayu (on an antelope), Agni
(on a ram), Indra (on an elephant), and Kama (on
a dolphin) are clearly recognizable. From the Dumar
Lena cave at Elura, in His Highness the Nizam's
Dominions. After a photograph in the Library of the
India Office, London.



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 119

the Saivas later made amends by freely interpolating passages
in which Siva is exalted to the position of all-god in a manner
too strikingly parallel to the encomia of Visnu to leave much
doubt as to the deliberate character of the change. Thus Siva
is praised by Visnu himself (vii. 2875 ff.) in terms of the highest
laudation; and elsewhere (vii. 9461 if.) he is lauded as the un-
born, the inconceivable, the soul of action, the unmoved; and
he who knows him as the self of self attains unity with the ab-
solute. Quite apart from this sectarian glorification it is clear
that in the earliest epic Siva already enjoyed the position of a
great god, and this is borne out even by the Rdmayana,
which, in its present form, is a Vaisnava text. This is in per-
fect accord with the growing greatness of his figure in the age
of the Brdhmanas, but in the epic a new motive in his character
appears undisguisedly: in addition to the dark and demoniac
side of his nature, in addition to his aspect as the ideal ascetic,
he is seen as a god of fertility whose worship is connected with
the phallus, or lijiga, and whose ritual, like that of Dionysos, is
essentially orgiastic. It is uncertain to what origin we should
trace this feature in his character: ^ the I^gveda already repro-
bates the phallus- worshippers (sisnadeva), and there is no evi-
dence of a phallic cult in the Brdhmana literature. There is,
therefore, reason enough to believe that the phallic element in
the Siva-cult was foreign to Vedic worship and that it prob-
ably owed its origin to the earlier inhabitants of the land, though
It is possible that it may have been practised by another stock
of the Aryan invaders and rejected by the Vedic branch. At
any rate it seems certain that Siva, as he appears in the epic,
includes the personality of a vegetation-god.

In Uma, the wife of Siva, we have, no doubt, a goddess of
nature and a divinity likewise foreign to the old Vedic religion,
since her name appears only in the last strata of the period of the
Brdhmanas. But though she was, we may well believe, an inde-
pendent deity in the beginning, in her development she has

evolved into a female counterpart of Siva and has lost her own
VI — 9



I20 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

personality in great measure in becoming a feminine expression
of her husband's character, especially in its dark and sinister
aspect. As her descent from Himavant denotes, like her hus-
band she was particularly a goddess of the north and of the earth
in its mountainous, and not in its peaceful, aspect, which explains
in part her wild and ferocious character. She seems also to
have been identified with a goddess of the non-Aryan tribes
of the Vindhya.

While Siva and his consort represent the ascetic side of In-
dian religion, Visnu and his spouse display the milder and more
human aspects of that faith. Like Indra he is reckoned as one
of the Adityas, and the youngest, but he is also the only Aditya
who is enduring, unconquerable, imperishable, the everlasting
and mighty lord. Though Indra's younger brother, it was he
who secured Indra in the kinship over the worlds. His abode
is on the top of Mount Mandara, to the east of Meru, and to
the north of the sea of milk. Higher even than Brahma's
seat is his place, in everlasting light, and thither they only go
who are without egoism, unselfish, free from <^allty, and with
restrained senses. Not even Brahmarsis or Maharsis attain
to it, but Yatis alone, that is, men who have completely over-
come the temptations of sense. He has four arms and lotus eyes,
and bears on his breast the vatsa ("calf") mark which he re-
ceived when the great sage Bharadvaja threw water at him
because he disturbed him at prayer. From his navel, when he
lay musing, sprang a lotus, and in it appeared Brahma with his
four faces. His raiment is yellow, and on his breast he bears
the Kaustubha gem which came forth on the churning of the
ocean. He has a chariot of gold, eight-wheeled, swift as thought,
and yoked with demons, and the couch on which he lies as he
muses is the serpent Sesa or Ananta, who holds the earth at
Brahma's command and bears up the slumbering god. His
standard is the bird Garuda. His weapons are a cakra, or
discus, with which he overwhelmed the Daityas, a conch, a
club, and a bow.



r •



PLATE XI

Birth of Brahma

Visnu rests, absorbed in meditation, on the cosmic
serpent Ananta ("Infinite"), who floats on the
cosmic ocean. LaksmI, the wife of the god, shampoos
his feet. From his navel springs a lotus, on which
appears the four-headed deity Brahma. From an
Indian water-colour in the collection of the Editor.



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 121

Like Siva Visnu must have a thousand names, which the
Mahdbhdrata enumerates and in part explains, ascribing the
name Visnu to the greatness (vrhattva) of the god. Sectarian
enthusiasm raises him to the position of all-god and subordi-
nates to himnot only Brahma buteven Siva himself. As Brahma
is born from the lotus on Visnu's navel, so Siva is born from
his forehead. A favourite name of his is Hari, and at the very-
close of the epic period the Harivamsa commemorates the
equality of the two great gods of the epic in the compound
Harihara, Hara, as we have seen, being an epithet of Visnu.
Another name with mystic sense is Narayana, which is used to
denote the god in his relation of identity with man.

While Siva is the ascetic in his gruesome aspect, the per-
former of countless years of hateful austerities, Visnu also is a
yogin, though in a very different way. When all the world has
been destroyed and all beings have perished, then Visnu muses
on the waters, resting on the serpent, thus personifying the
state of absorption of the soul in the Supreme Being. This,
however, is the less important side of his being, which expresses
itself in the desire to punish and restrain the bad and to reward
and encourage the good. He is represented as deliberately de-
ciding for this purpose to assume such forms as those of a boar,
a man-lion, a dwarf, and a man; and these constitute his ava-
tars, or "descents," which in ever increasing number reveal
Visnu in his character of the loving and compassionate god,
and which, by bringing him into close contact with humanity,
distinguish him from Siva, whom the epic never regards as
taking human shape.

The incarnations of Visnu known to the Mahdbhdrata are
as a boar, a dwarf, a man-lion, the head of a horse, and Krsna,
of which the first three only are normally reckoned among his
avatars. The boar incarnation was assumed when all the sur-
face of the earth was flooded with water, and when the lord,
wandering about like a fire-fly in the night in the rainy season,
sought some place on which to fix the earth, which he was fain



122 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

to save from the deluge. The shape which he took was ten
yojanas (leagues) broad and a hundred yojanas long, like a
great mountain, shining with sharp tusks, and resembling a
dark thunder-cloud. Assuming it, he descended into the water,
and grasping the sinking earth with one of his tusks, he drew it
up and set it back in its due place. In the dwarf incarnation
Visnu was born as a son of Kasyapa and Aditi, his original
parents, in order to deprive Bali, son of Virocana, of the sov-
ereignty of the three worlds which he had attained. He came
into being with matted hair, in the shape of a dwarf, of the
height of a boy, bearing staff and jar, and marked with the
(J^^^vatsa. Accompanied by Brhaspati, he strode to the Danavas*
place of sacrifice, and Bali, seeing him, courteously offered him
a boon. In reply Visnu chose three steps of ground, but when
the demon accorded them, Visnu, resuming his true shape, in
three great strides encompassed the three worlds, which he
then handed over to Indra to rule. The myth is clearly only a
variant of the three steps of Visnu in the J^gveda, and the boar
incarnation also has a forerunner in that text in so far as Visnu
is represented in close connexion with a boar.

The episode of the man-lion is only briefly related in the
Mahdhhdrata: Visnu assumed the form half of a lion and half
of a man and went to the assembly of the Daityas. There
Hiranyakasipu, the son of Diti, saw him and advanced against
him in anger, trident in hand and rumbling like a thunder-
cloud, only to be torn in pieces by the sharp claws of the lion-
man. This double form is a new motive in Indian mythology
and has no Vedic parallel.

The incarnation with a horse's head has a faint Vedic prede-
cessor in the legend that the doctrine of the Madhu ("Mead")
was told by a horse's head. In the epic story we are informed
that two Danavas, Madhu and Kaitabha, stole the Vedas from
Brahma and entered the sea, whereupon the deity was cast
into deep sorrow and bethought himself of seeking the aid of
Visnu. The latter, gratified by his adoration, assumed the

[Prometheus]

PLATE XII

Varahavatara

Visnu, incarnate as a boar, raises from the flood
the Earth, who, in the figure of a woman, clings to
his tusk. From a sculpture at Eran, Sagar, Central
Provinces. After Coomaraswamy, Visvakarma^ Plate
XCIII.




Fig. 4. TiTE Narasimha ("Man-Lion") Avatar of Visnu

Through his austerities the Daitya Hiranyakasipu had obtained the boon that he
should be slain neither by man nor by animal. His son, Prahlada, was a devout wor-
shipper of Visnu, whom Hiranyakasipu hated. Told by Prahlada that Visnu is omni-
present, Hiranyakasipu asked scornfully whether he was in a certain pillar of the
palace, and when told that he was even there, he struck it to destroy the deity. Im-
mediately Visnu appeared from the pillar in the guise of a being part man and part
lion and tore the unbeliever asunder. After Moor, Hindu Pantheon, Plate L.



124 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

head of a horse, and plunging into the sea, rescued the Vedas
and restored them to Brahma, after which he returned to his
proper form and assailed the two Danavas, whom he slew in
revenge for their insult to Brahma.

The Mahabhdrata (iii. 12746 ff.) has a version of the famous
story of the deluge, but the fish which saves Manu and the
seeds of all things from destruction reveals himself, when the
vessel which he ? supports rests upon Mount Naubandhana,
as Brahma rather than as Visnu, as in the later accounts of the
Purdnas. These, however, like the previous avatars, are mere
episodes in the life of the god, while the embodiments of Vi§nu
as Krsna and Rama belong to a different order of myths and
add materially to the godhead of Visnu. It is through them,
indeed, that the ancient Vedic sun-god attains his full great-
ness and becomes specially adapted for the position of supreme
divinity and the object of keen sectarian worship.

The wife of Visnu is Laksmi or Sri, who came forth, accord-
ing to one version, at the churning of the ocean, while in an-
other a lotus sprang from the forehead of Visnu, whence was
born Sri, who became the wife of Dharma, or "Justice." She
is the goddess of beauty and prosperity and can boast that no
god, Gandharva, Asura, or Rak§asa is able to overpower her.
Unlike Kali, however, she has no distinct personality in the
epic and is but a faint reflex of her husband, though possibly
enough she was once an independent and living goddess.

In the Mahabhdrata as we have it Krsna is recognized as an
incarnation of Narayana Visnu, and the Bhagavadgitd, which
is his song, declares his identity with the supreme principle
of the universe. He was, we are told, born in the family of the
Yadus as the son of Vasudeva and Devaki, and throughout
the body of the epic he plays the role of a partisan and most
energetic supporter of the Pandavas. His character is decidedly
unsatisfactory and is marked by every sort of deceit and
trickery. It was he who gave the advice how to secure the over-
throw of Drona and who proved to Arjuna that truth must



PLATE XIII

Laksmi

The Goddess of Wealth and Beauty, whose birth
at the churning of the ocean is represented in Fig. 2,
is here shown in her usual form as a lovely woman
seated on a lotus. On either side stands an elephant
holding a canopy over her head. The small, separate
figures have no mythological significance. For an-
other conception of her see Plate XXI. From
a painted alabaster group in the Peabody Museum,
Salem, Mass.



BIUfiY



TOR. LEXOX A>fB
DEN i^f-NDAnONS



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 125

not always be told, and against the reproof of Yudhlsthira
he defended the action of Bhima in unfairly defeating Duryo-
dhana in the final duel. Subsequently he saved BhIma from the
fate prepared for him by Dhrtarastra by substituting an iron
statue for him. Because of his share in the ruin of the Kaura-
vas he was cursed by Gandharl, their mother, and he admit-
ted that the doom was fated to be accomplished in the des-
truction of himself and his race. He was present at the
horse sacrifice by which Yudhisthira proclaimed his complete
sovereignty, and then retired to his country of Dvaraka.
There strife broke out among the Yadavas, this being followed
by the death of Krsna, who was accidentally pierced in the
sole of the foot (where alone he was vulnerable) by an arrow
shot by a hunter with the significant name of Jara ("Old
Age"). Later, in the Harivamsa and the Pur anas we have
details of the early days of Krsna, and there is evidence that
these stories were known even in the second century B.C.,
although, disregarding interpolations which are obviously late,
it is certain that the epic normally considers Krsna as essen-
tially heroic. It is, however, equally clear that his association
with Visnu is not primitive, but that it has been introduced
into the epic in the course of time: indeed, it is doubtful if
the Bhagavadgitd itself was originally Vaisnavite in tendency,
but even if that were the case, it is certain that the Krsnaite
redaction was an afterthought.

The origin of this new and most important deity is obscure
and probably insoluble. In the opinion of E. W. Hopkins *
Krsna was the chief god of the invading tribe of the Yadavas-
Pandavas who came from the hill country north of the Ganges
and overthrew the Kurus in the stronghold of Brahmanism
in the holy land about the present Delhi. But the conquerors,
as often, were merged in the Brahmanic society which they
had conquered, while the priests identified their divinity, who
— as in the case of most of the hill tribes of the Gangetic
region — was the tribal hero as a sun-god, with Visnu, the



126 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Vedic and Brahmanic solar deity. Krsna, son of DevakI, is
mentioned in the Chdndojya Upanisad (III. xvii. 6) as having a
teacher named Ghora Angirasa, who taught him a doctrine
which is summed up by Hopkins as showing the vanity of
sacrifice and inculcating the worship of the sun-god; and in
this record may be seen a trace of a deity whose name in the
native tongue of the invaders may have been sufficiently close
to the Sanskrit Krsna to render the identification possible and
easy. On the other hand, R. Garbe^ insists that from the
first Krsna was nothing more than a man, and that his deifica-
tion was a process of euhemerism, carried out at an early date,
since the excavations at Rummindei indicate that the prede-
cessors of the Buddha worshipped Rukmini, the wife of Krsna.
The early date of his cult is clearly proved by the Herakles
of Megasthenes, who can certainly be none other than this
god. So far as it goes, the earliness of the date of the divinity
of Krsna seems rather to tell against the theory of his deifica-
tion and to suggest that he was always a god and, probably
enough, not so much a sun-god — a conception which ill fits
his name, which means "Black" — as a representation of the
spirit of the dark earth, a vegetation-god. For this hypoth-
esis a definite support is given by a notice in the Mahd-
bhdsya^ of Pataiijali (written about 150-140 B.C.), from which
it appears that Krsna and Karhsa, who in the later accounts
of the Harivamsa appears as his cruel uncle, were protagonists
in a ritual contest which is precisely parallel to the combats
which in many parts of Europe have symbolized the death of
the old and the victory of the new spirit of vegetation, and
from which the Greek and perhaps the Indian drama have
grown. The human character of the vegetation-spirit is a
marked characteristic of that spirit in all lands, and hence we
may readily understand how the god of the Pandavas was
conceived as aiding them in bodily presence even at the expense
of some diminution of his divinity, of which, however, the epic
never loses sight. His identification with Visnu was doubtless



PLATE XIV

Krsna

The deity is represented in characteristic pose with
crossed legs and playing his pipe, which is lost in the
carving here shown. From an old Orissan ivory.
After Watt, Indian Art at Delhi, Plate LXXVI.



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 127

effected easily enough, for in all times the Brahmans have
found no difficulty in finding a place for new gods. In the
epic the home of Kfsna in his latter days figures as Dvaraka
in Gujarat, but it is difficult to say whether this is safe ground
for inferring that his godhead was first recognized there; it is
at least clear that it was among the Pandavas and in the vicin-
ity of the Gangetic valley that his greatness grew.

In the epic the wife of Kfsna is Rukmini, but she shows no
divine features: she refused to survive her husband's death and
perished by fire with Gandharl and others.

The other great incarnation of Visnu is that as Rama, whose
story, as told both in the Rdmdyana and in a long episode in
the Mahdbhdrata, presents him as none other than Visnu.
Dasaratha, king of Kosala, with his capital at Ayodhya, was
a wise and powerful ruler, but he had no sons, wherefore, to
obtain children, he performed the horse sacrifice with the aid
of the sage Rsyasrnga. At the time the gods were in fear of the
demon Ravana, to whom Brahma had granted the gift of in-
vulnerability, and they sought a means of killing him. This,
they found, could be accomplished only by a man, and for
this end they begged Visnu to take human form. Visnu ac-
cordingly came to life as Rama, the son of Dasaratha by
Kausalya, while Kaikeyi and Sumitra, the other wives of the
king, bore Bharata and the twins Laksmana and Satrughna
respectively. Rama grew up to a glorious youth and won the
hand of Sita, who had sprung from the earth when King
Janaka of Videha ploughed the ground. Dasaratha, feeling
that his life was drawing near its close, contemplated the per-
formance of the ceremony of appointing Rama to be heir ap-
parent, but at this moment Kaikeyi intervened and demanded
from the King the execution of a promise which he had made
long before. The monarch felt that he must keep his word, in
which resolve he was strengthened by Rama's readiness to
aid him to fulfil his promise, so that Rama was banished for
fourteen years, the post of heir apparent being conferred on



128 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

Bharata. The separation from his son broke the heart of Dasa-
ratha, who soon passed away, whereupon Bharata, hastily
seeking Rama, endeavoured to persuade him to return to rule
the state, and when he refused, regarded himself as no more
than his vicegerent. In the meantime Rama, accompanied by
the faithful SIta and Lak§mana, proceeded to the Dandaka
forest, where Sita was stolen from him by Ravana and carried
away to Lanka, which (in later times at least) is reckoned as
Ceylon. Rama makes alliance with the apes under Sugriva,
who is at variance with Valin, his elder brother; and with the
ape army, and especially Hanuman, the son of Maruta by
Aiijana, succeeds after great struggles in reaching Lanka and
in slaying Ravana. By passing through the fire Sita proves
that her purity has been uninjured despite her captivity in
Lanka, and husband and wife are united. Later, however,
Rama is again troubled by the popular dissatisfaction at his
action in taking Sita back after her abduction and dismisses
her; she departs and stays at the hermitage of Valmiki, to
whom the Rdmdyana is ascribed, and there gives birth to the
children Kusa and Lava, in whose names can be seen a popular
etymology of the word kusilava, the name of the wandering
minstrels who sang the epic songs to princely courts and even
to the people. Rama prepares a horse sacrifice, and his two
sons, at the instigation of Valmiki, appear at the place of sacri-
fice and recite to him the story of his deeds. Learning the
identity of the boys, the king sends to Valmiki, desiring to
arrange that Sita should prove her purity by an oath before the
whole assemblage; and when Valmiki presents himself accom-
panied by Sita and declares her spotlessness, Rama admits
that he is now convinced. Then the gods all manifest them-
selves to lend their authority to the oath of Sita, but she, as-
serting her chastity, asks the divinity Madhavl to receive her
in proof of it. The goddess Earth then appears, embraces
Sita, and vanishes with her under the ground to the wonder
of the assembled gathering, while Rama's despair at her loss



PLATE XV

Hanuman

The monkey-god, the great ally of Rama, is here
shown in mild and attractive form. From a Ceylonese
copper figure in the Indian Museum, London. After
Coomaraswamy, V'lsvakarma^ Plate C.



THE VF.W YORK

PUBLIC LIBRARY



A?rOB, I'SXOX AND
TILDEN rCCNDATiONS



THE GREAT GODS OF THE EPIC 129

is lessened only by assurances of future reunion. This second
doubt of SIta and her tragic departure, is, however, like the
assertion of the identification of Rama and Visnu, clearly no
part of the earlier form of the Rdmdyana legend. Taking what
remains, it falls into two parts, the first of which is quite a
simple story of the intrigues which must have troubled many
a royal family, while the second is definitely mythical in nature.
By far the most probable explanation of the story is that sug-
gested by H. Jacobi.'^ Sita, it is clear, is no mere mortal woman,
for in the Rgveda (IV. Ivii. G-j) she is worshipped as the fur-
row made by the plough, and this conception was a popular
one, since in the much later and more popular texts, the Adbhutd-
dhydya of the KauHka Sutra and the Pdraskara Grhya Sutra
(ii. 17), she appears as the genius of the ploughed field and is
described as a being of wonderful beauty, wife of Indra or
Parjanya. The rape of Sita at once presents itself as the parallel
to an agricultural population to the Panis' theft of the cows
in the shape of the waters, and he who wins them back can
be none other than a form of Indra, while the thief must be
Vrtra. This again finds support in the fact that a son of Rav-
ana's is called Indra's foe or vanquisher, and one of his brothers,
Kumbhakarna, dwells, like the Vedic Vrtra, in a cave. Further
confirmation from the position of Hanuman is also forthcom-
ing. That god in modern India is essentially the guardian god
of every village settlement, and it may well be that in origin
he was the genius of the monsoon. This conception would be
quite in liirmony with his birth from the wind-god, his power
of assuming shape at will like the clouds, his long journeys
over the sea in search of Sita, and the bringing back of Sita
from the south (whence the monsoon comes) with the help of
the apes, that is, the rain-clouds. In the deeds of Hanuman
there may actually be a reflex of the journey of Sarama in the
Veda across the Rasa to seek the clouds when they were stolen
by the Panis. Rama may have been a local god similar in
character to Indra, but representing the views of a society



I30 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

which was essentially agricultural and not pastoral; and his
identification with Visnu was doubtless instigated by the same
motives which led to the identification of Krsna with that
great god and which has in the course of time brought many
other deities into the fold of Visnu.

Efforts have been made to find a mythological background
for the Mahdbhdrata in the conception of a struggle of the five
seasons of the year, represented by the Pandavas, against the
winter, which is thus supposed to be typified by Duryodhana,
but this interpretation can scarcely be maintained in face of
the extremely human characteristics of the figures of the great
epic, which in this respect stands in marked contrast to much
of the Rdmdyana.



CHAPTER V
MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD

MANY as are the deities recognized in the epic, no one of
them has any real supremacy in comparison with the
great gods, Siva and Visnu. The tradition of the greatness of
Indra survives indeed in the epithets which are freely bestowed
upon him, but in nothing else. He is called "the Head of the
Suras," "the God of the Gods," "the King of the Gods,"
"the Lord of All the Gods," and "the Powerful" (Sakra);
he is also said to have attained Indraship by surpassing all the
gods in sacrifice and to have become the overlord of the gods
through slaying Daityas and Danavas, while after the killing
of Vrtra he won the title of Mahendra ("Great Indra"). His
abode is "Heaven" (Svarga), and at the entrance stands his
elephant Airavata, with its four tusks like Mount Kailasa.
After his conflict with Siva in the form of a mountaineer, Arjuna
was conducted thither by Matali in Indra's chariot, the ascent
being made from Mount Mandara in the Himavant range.
The grove in Svarga is called Nandana ("the Place of Joy"),
and Indra's city itself is termed Amaravati. It has a thousand
gates and is a hundred yojanas in extent, is adorned with
jewels, and yields the fruit of every season. There the sun
does not scorch, and neither heat nor cold nor fatigue tor-
ments the dwellers. There there is neither grief, nor despond-
ency, nor weakness, nor anger, nor covetousness. In his
assembly hall, which he himself built and which can move
where it wills, sits Sakra with his wife SacI, wearing his crown
and with a white screen held over him. Old age, fatigue, and
fear are forgotten in that abode of bliss; and thither come



132 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

those who sacrifice, those who perform penance, and above all
those warrior heroes who meet their death in battle.

Besides Airavata, Indra has a steed named Uccaihsravas,
which came forth at the churning of the ocean. His chariot is
drawn by ten thousand reddish-yellow'horses who are as swift as
wind; the lightning and the thunderbolt are on the car, and as
it cleaves the sky it scatters the dark clouds. The flagstaff",
Vaijayanta, is bright blue and is decorated with gold. The
charioteer is Matali, councillor and friend of Indra, of whom a
pretty story is told. His daughter by Sudharma was of ex-
ceeding beauty, and neither among gods, demons, men, nor
seers could Matali find one whom he thought worthy of her.
Accordingly, after taking counsel with his wife, he decided to
go to the world of Nagas, or Serpents, in search of a son-in-
law, and by permission of Varuna he went thither with Narada,
in due course finding the handsome Sumukha who became the
husband of Gunakesl. The weapons borne by the god are the
thunderbolt, which Tvastr made from the bones of the seer
Dadhica and with which he struck ofi" the head of Vrtra and
cleaves even mountains, the spear Vijaya, and the conch
Devadatta.

As in the Veda, Indra is ever distinguished by his conflicts
with demons. He was engaged in the great struggle of the
Suras with the Asuras which broke out after the churning of the
ocean, but his weakness is shown by the fact that the victory
could be achieved only by the aid of Visnu, who on the over-
throw of the demons gave the rule of the three worlds to
Indra. Then followed for a time a golden age, when Indra,
seated on Airavata, gazed on a prosperous world, flourishing
towns and villages, kings devoted to their duty, and happy
and contented people. Sri came and dwelt with him, and Indra
wrought great deeds, such as the slaying of numbers of the
Asuras, the freeing of Brhaspati's wife Taraka, and the rescue
of the daughter of Puloman. But prosperity led Indra to
fall into evil courses: he set his desire upon Ruci, the wife of

[Prometheus]

MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD 133

Devasarman, and seduced Ahalya; and, worst of all, he slew
the son of Tvastr, Visvarupa Trisiras. Failing to tempt this
pious being by the wiles of an Apsaras, he smote him with his
thunderbolt and ordered a wood-cutter to chop off his head.
In revenge Tvastr created Vrtra and commanded him to slay
Indra. Then ensued a long war, and the gods sought the ad-
vice of Visnu in order to secure peace. Vrtra, however, would
not consent to any reconciliation unless he were promised
immunity from dry or wet, stone or wood, sword or javelin,
by day or by night. On these terms peace was made, but
Indra kept to his resolve to slay his rival, and meeting him on
the seashore, at the junction of wet and dry, at the twilight
between day and night, he killed him with the foam of the
sea and the thunderbolt into which Visnu had entered. Soon,
however, he realized the enormity of his own deed in slaying a
Brahman and fled in terror to the remotest part of the earth,
where he lived concealed in a lotus stalk in a lake. Then the
earth became desolate, the forest withered, the rivers ceased
to flow, and creatures perished for lack of rain; wherefore the
gods and seers went to Nahusa and persuaded him to accept
the kingship, seeing the evils caused by the lack of a monarch.
He consented, but after receiving the new rank he abandoned
himself to idle enjoyment, and seeing Saci, the wife of Indra,
he desired her. Saci, loyal to Indra, sought the protection of
BrhaspatI, but Nahusa replied that as Indra had been allowed
to seduce Ahalya, he also should be permitted to take Saci.
Sad in despair obtained a postponement by insisting that Indra
might still be discovered, and in the meantime the gods sought
the advice of Visnu, who promised that Indra should regain
his position by performing a horse sacrifice to him. Indra did
so and thus was purified from the sin of Brahman-slaying.
Sad then besought him to return and slay Nahusa, whereupon
he bade her induce the sage to cause himself to be drawn in
a chariot by the seven Rsis. The advice proved successful, for,
while Nahusa carried out the wish of Saci, he foolishly allowed



134 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

himself to be drawn into an argument with Agastya as to the
lawfulness of the eating of meat, and indignant with him, the
seer, whom he had kicked on the head, hurled him from heaven
to dwell in snake form for ten thousand years. Indra was
then restored to the kingship. Other demons were also slain
by Indra, the most important of them being Namuci, whose
story is a variant of that of Vrtra, of whom he is only another

form.

Indra has a famous wish-cow who is the daughter of Surabhi
and is called Sarvakamadugha or Nandini. She is fat, and the
potency of her milk is such that the mortal who drinks it will
be Hke a strong youth for a thousand years. Vasistha, son of
Varuna, obtained her as a sacrificial cow, but for a time she
was stolen by Dyaus, so that in atonement of his crime he was
doomed to a long sojourn on earth among mortals. Her mother,
Surabhi, was the daughter of Daksa Prajapati, and her home
is the seventh layer under the earth, Rasatala; but by her as-
ceticism she received from Brahma immortality and a world,
Goloka, above the three worlds. She created daughters, four
of whom — SurOpa, Harhsika, Subhadra, and Sarvakama-
dugha — support the east, south, west, and north corners of
the heavens, but she weeps because her son is tormented by
the ploughman with his goad.

Indra has a thousand eyes since, according to one version,
when Tilottama walked round him and the other gods, pro-
ducing the four heads of Siva, a thousand eyes burst forth on
his back, sides, and front; although another legend says that
Gautama cursed Indra for his inability to restrain his passions
and as punishment caused a thousand marks to appear on his
body which afterward in compassion he allowed to disappear.

Indra's wife is IndranI, MahendranI, or Saci ("the Power-
ful"). She proved her devotion to her husband and her quick-
ness of wit in the efforts which she made to repulse Nahusa.

In the epic Indra is constantly a god of rain, and in this
aspect he has completely swallowed up Parjanya, who is



MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD 135

indeed mentioned separately from him in the lists of the
Adityas, but who is no more in reality than another name for
Indra. Thus, when Agastya sacrificed liberally and the Thou-
sand-Eyed One still did not rain, the sages could say, "Agastya
offers generously in sacrifice, yet Parjanya does not rain; how,
then, can there be food?" Both epics have the most vivid de-
scriptions of the effects of the rain on the earth after the
drought, and of the misery caused by the failure of the rain
to fall; but the storm no longer produces mythology, and the
treatment is poetic.

Another god who has fallen on evil days in an age in which
the mere physical element is not enough to support a real
divinity is Vayu ("Wind"), who bears also the names of Marut,
Vata, Anila, and Pavana ("the Purifying"). It is said indeed
that neither Indra nor Yama nor Varuna is his peer in strength,
and his pleasant, comfort-bearing breath is mentioned, as
well as his friendship for Agni, but the deification is merely
formal.

Agni has survived with more reality, though not simply as
fire, his continued importance, such as it is, being due to the
fact that he represents on the one hand the sacrificial flame,
and on the other the cosmic fire. He is the eater of the obla-
tions, the mouth by which the god and the fathers partake of
the sacrifice; he upholds the sacrificial ceremonies and purifies
from sin; his wife is the Svaha call uttered at the sacrifice; and
he himself is the sacrifice. On the other hand, in his cosmic
aspect he is the creator of all the worlds and the ender of them.
Nevertheless, traces of his earlier nature still exist: he is the
lightning in the clouds, he hides within the sami-wood, and
though he fears the water which quenches him, still he is said
to have been born in the waters, and in case of need (as when
Indra had fled after the slaying of Vrtra, and the gods were
anxious to find him to overthrow the wicked Nahusa) he can
be persuaded to enter them once more. From a higher point
of view he is the real cause of the existence of water, and the



136 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

waters are said to be deposited In him. Again, Agni is the in-
ternal fire within each man, and as such he knows everything
and is Jatavedas. He is, as of old, lord of Vasus and is said to
be a child of Brahma.

As in the Veda, Agni was apt to disappear, and on one occa-
sion this was due to the curse of Bhrgu. That sage had suc-
ceeded in marrying Puloma, who had formerly been betrothed
to the Raksasa Puloman, but whom her father had later given
in due form to Bhrgu. While the latter was absent the Raksasa
came to his dwelling, where he was received hospitably by
Puloma, who was disclosed to him by Agni; but not knowing
whose wife she was, Puloman abducted her. In revenge for
Agni's action Bhrgu cursed him, and as a result the divinity
withdrew from the sacrifice and disappeared into the saml-
tree. Much disturbed, the gods sought him, and at their re-
quest he returned, so that the sacrifices were resumed once
more. Another story tells that Agni fell in love with King
Nila's beautiful daughter, whose lot it was to tend her father's
sacred fire. In the form of a Brahman he wooed and with dif-
ficulty won the maiden, and rewarded her father in his struggle
with Sahadeva by causing the horses, chariots, army, and
even the body of the latter to burst into flame, Sahadeva and
the other rivals of Nila being thus destroyed and eaten by the
god of fire.

Soma also ranks, like Vayu and Agni, as a Vasu: his father
was Atri, and in the epic he is the moon pure and simple, so
that at times he bears the names Candramas, Candra, or
Indu, all meaning simply "Moon." His fame rests on his mar-
riage with twenty-seven of the daughters of Daksa Prajapati,
the twenty-seven Naksatras, or lunar mansions. Soma un-
happily conceived an excessive affection for RohinI alone of
his wives, wherefore her sisters, going to their father, asked
him to redress their grievance. Thereupon Daksa, by a curse,
brought sickness on Soma, who appealed to his father-in-iaw,
only to be told that he had acted unfairly. Nevertheless, the



MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD 137

seers directed him to effect a cure by bathing at Hiranyatirtha
in the western region by the sea, and Soma did so, whence the
place won the name of Prabhasa (" Splendour ") . On account of
the curse, however, the moon Is still hidden when it is new, and
at Its full shows a body covered by a line of clouds, whence Is
derived the view that there is a hare in the moon. Another trial
of Soma's is his enmity with Rahu, a demon who ever seeks to
swallow him and who thus causes eclipses.

With Varuna Soma comes Into close relation: by drinking
all his six juices he Is born to kill the darkness at the beginning
of the light half of the month, and his daughter Jyotsnakali
married Puskara, Varuna's handsome and clever son. Trouble
arose, however, over his daughter Bhadra. Soma found for
her a suitable husband in the Brahman Utathya, but since
Varuna had long desired her, one day he came to the forest
where she lived and stole her after she had entered the water
in order to bathe. On hearing the news Utathya sent Narada
to demand the restoration of his wife, but Narada's embassy
was fruitless. Utathya then drank up all the waters; and since
even this drastic procedure had no effect, he caused the lakes
on earth, to the number of six hundred thousand, to dry up and
the rivers to disappear In the desert, whereupon Varuna at last
repented of his action and restored his wife to Utathya.

In this legend Varuna appears, just as In early days, as a
god of the waters, and this Is essentially his character through-
out the epic. Here and there, in company with Mitra, men-
tion Is made of his radiance and his light hue, and both are
Adityas; but, unlike the Vedic concept of these two deities,
neither stands In any relation with the light of day or night.
Varuna, on the contrary, bears many aqueous epithets, such
as "God of the Waters," "Lord of Water," "Lord of the
Rivers," and "Lord of Every Stream"; and it Is as "Lord of the
Waters " that he Is said to rule over the Asuras. To this suprem-
acy he was unanimously appointed at the beginning of the
Krta age. His realm Is in the west, and he dwells in the ocean,



138 INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

filled with Nagas, aquatic monsters, precious stones, and fire,
and rich in salt; and in the sea is also an egg whence flames will
burst forth at the end of the world and destroy the whole of
the three worlds. His city is full of palaces and Apsarases, and
his own palace is made wholly of gold, while cooling waters
drip from his royal canopy. He sits with his wife, Siddhi, or
Gaurl, or Varum, in his hall of assembly, w^hich VIsvakarman
built in the midst of the waters and which contains divine
trees consisting of pearls and producing every kind of fruit.
He himself is dark blue in colour and like Yama he bears a
noose, while his conch was fashioned for him by Visvakarman
from a thousand pieces of gold. It was from him that Arjuna
obtained the bow Gandiva, as well as chariots and other gifts.
Besides his son Puskara he had another, who was named Bandin
and was the suta of King Janaka. Defeated by the young boy
Astavakra in a competition because of his inability to enu-
merate things which made up thirteen, Bandin proved his con-
nexion with his father by plunging into the waters- and thus
uniting himself with him.

The sun-deity of the epic is Surya or Aditya, son of Aditi,
the ruler of the flaming lights, the light of the world, the father
of beings who sustains them with his heat, the entrance to the
ways of the gods. In him are summed up the many aspects of
the Adityas, as Pusan, Bhaga, Savitr, Aryaman, Dhatr, and
VIvasvant. The sun is described as being as yellow as honey,
with large arms and with a neck like tortoise-shell, and as
wearing bracelets and a diadem. His ear-rings were the gift
of Aditl. A single Naga draws his chariot, which has but one
wheel, though elsewhere seven steeds are mentioned. He has a
special place in the epic in that he was the god whom KuntI
summoned to wed her and to whom she bore Karna, who was
thus the eldest brother of the Pandava Yudhisthira. His wife
is called Suvarcala ("the Resplendent") and is mentioned
as taking the form of a mare. His daughter is married to
Bhanu, i.e. to himself In another form, and his son Is Yama



MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD 139

Valvasvata. Like Soma he lives at enmity with Rahu, by whose
swallowing of him he is at times eclipsed.

Two other forms of the sun are to be seen in Aruna and
Garuda, the sons of Kasyapa by Vinata, daughter of Daksa
Prajapati. Aruna ("the Ruddy") was made the charioteer of
the sun because, in anger at the misery inflicted upon him by
Rahu, he threatened to burn the world, and the gods desired
to restrain his fury. It is even possible that the Rgveda al-
ludes to him. He is, however, but a faint figure, while his
younger brother, Garuda, figures in a great achievement, the
stealing of the ambrosia from the gods. His mother Vinata had
a sister Kadru who like herself was married to Kasyapa, who
gave each a boon: Kadru received as progeny a thousand ser-
pent sons, against Vinata's two children. In both cases the
offspring were produced as eggs, from which the snakes were
born in five hundred years; but Vinata unwisely broke one of
the two eggs and found Aruna only half grown. He doomed
her to become a slave until she should be set free by her second
son, Garuda, and his curse was soon fulfilled. Kadru and
Vinata staked their freedom ^ on the question whether the
horse Uccaihsravas, which came into being at the churning of
the ocean, was partly black or pure white. They crossed the
ocean to decide the wager, and as Kadrii had induced her sons,
the snakes, to fasten themselves on to the horse, it was found
to have a black tail, and Vinata fell into bondage. Then
Garuda came to life from the egg and shared his mother's
fate. He learned, however, that he could free himself by ob-
taining the ambrosia, and after many adventures he defeated
the gods, extinguished the fire which surrounded the ambrosia,
penetrated the whirling wheel of blades, and slaying the
snakes which guarded the soma, he bore it away without
drinking of it. In reward for this great deed Visnu gives him
immortality, sets him on his standard, and chooses him for
his steed. Indra, however, hurls the thunderbolt against him,
but Garuda lets only a single feather fall. Indra then makes



i^^o INDIAN MYTHOLOGY

peace with him and seeks to obtain the soma from him.
Garuda refuses to give It to Indra, but the deity steals it after
Garuda has gone to bathe, having set it out on kusa-^v^ss for
the snakes. The serpents lick the place where the soma has
lain, and thus their tongues become forked.

The legend shows clear traces of the Vedic tale of the brmg-
Ing down of the soma to earth by the GSyatrl: like the Giyatrl
Garuda is regarded as a bird and is called both Garutmant
("the Winged") and Suparna ("the Fair-Feathered"). With
the wind of the motion of his wings he can stay the rotation of
the three worlds, and his strength is so great that he seems to
drag the earth after him as he goes. VIsnu Indeed once had to
check his boast of his might by laying on him the weight of his
right arm. The main object of Garuda, however, as of his six
sons and their offspring, is to prey on the snakes.

An essentially new deity Is Skanda, who ranks both as the
son of Agni and of Siva, although as a matter of fact he was
brought to life In a mysterious way In order to create for
Devasena, daughter of Prajapati, a husband stronger than
gods and men alike. He was thought to be the son of the six
wives of the Seven Seers, ArundhatI being omitted; and the
seers having repudiated their spouses for their apparent in-
fidelity, they became stars In the constellation Kpttikas
("Pleiades"). Skanda is six-faced, but has only one neck; he
always wears red garments and rides on a peacock. His prowess
in war is great and marks him as the real war-god In the later
epic: he becomes the general of the army of the gods, who are
defeated in his absence, while the Asura Mahisa seeks to grasp
the chariot of VIsnu; but Skanda returns, and, slaying him, re-
establishes Indra in his position. He also killed Taraka, and
his spear never misses the mark, but, once thrown, returns to
him after slaying thousands of his foes.- When a boy, he thrust
his spear Into the ground In contempt for the three worlds and
challenged the whole world to remove it; the Daltya Prahlada,
Hiranyakasipu's son, fainted at the attempt, but, when VIsnu



PLATE XVI

Garuda

The mythic bird Garuda is the vahana ("vehicle")
of Visnu. He is the lord of birds, the brother of
Aruna, the charioteer of Surya (" the Sun "), and the
implacable foe of snakes, who are his half-brothers.
From an ebony carving in the collection of Lieut.-Col.
A. H. Milne, of Cults, Aberdeenshire, Scotland.



PUBLIC LllinARY



ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILOBN FHK>NDAriONS

B L



MINOR EPIC DEITIES AND THE DEAD 141

moved it with his left hand, the earth and its hills shook. With
his arrows Skanda split the rock Kraunca in Himavant; yet
he is not merely a war-god, for sometimes he is celebrated in
terms applicable to Siva himself as all-god and he seems to be
no more than a specialized form of Siva. The other form of
Siva, Ganesa, though prominent in the Purdnas, is not known
in the epic save in interpolated passages.

Another new god is Kama, who is called also Manmatha
("the Confusing"), Madana ("the Intoxicating"), and Kan-
darpa ("the Proud"), or Ananga ("the Bodiless"), who lost his
corporeal shape by his rash action in inspiring love in the heart
of Siva. He is the son of Dharma and has arrows like Cupid.
There can be little historical connexion between this somewhat
dilettante god of passion, who is a late comer in the epic, and the
Kama of the Atharvaveda (iii. 25), though both have arrows.
It is possible that Greek influence is here to be seen at work,
and it has even been suggested that it was the fame of Alexander
the Great that brought the name of Skanda into prominence
as a war-god.