Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/82

 identification of one deity with another an easy matter. Such identifications are frequent enough in the Rigveda. For example, a poet addressing the fire-god exclaims: "Thou at thy birth, O Agni, art Varuṇa; when kindled thou becomest Mitra; in thee, O Son of Might, all gods are centred; thou art Indra to the worshipper" (v. 3, 1).

Moreover, mystical speculations on the nature of Agni, so important a god in the eyes of a priesthood devoted to a fire-cult, on his many manifestations as individual fires on earth, and on his other aspects as atmospheric fire in lightning and as celestial fire in the sun—aspects which the Vedic poets are fond of alluding to in riddles—would suggest the idea that various deities are but different forms of a single divine being. This idea is found in more than one passage of the later hymns of the Rigveda. Thus the composer of a recent hymn (164) of the first book says: "The one being priests speak of in many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Mātariçvan." Similarly, a seer of the last book (x. 114) remarks: "Priests and poets with words make into many the bird (i.e. the sun) which is but one." Utterances like these show that by the end of the Rigvedic period the polytheism of the Rishis had received a monotheistic tinge.

Occasionally we even find shadowed forth the pantheistic idea of a deity representing not only all the gods, but Nature as well. Thus the goddess Aditi is identified with all the deities, with men, with all that has been and shall be born, with air, and heaven (i. 89); and in a cosmogonic hymn (x. 121) the Creator is not only described as the one god above all gods, but is said to embrace all things. This germ of pantheism developed through the later Vedic literature till it assumed its final shape in the