Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/244

202 earliest lyrical effusions of the Aryan settlers in India which have been handed down to posterity. They are cer tainly not all equally old ; on the contrary they evidently represent the literary activity of many generations of bards, though their relative age cannot as yet be deter mined with anything like certainty. The tenth and last book of the collection, however, at any rate has all the characteristics of a later appendage, and in language and spirit many of its hymns approach very nearly to the level of the contents of the Atharvan. Of the latter collection about one-sixth is found also in the Rigveda, and especially in the tenth book ; the larger portion peculiar to it, though including no doubt some older pieces, appears to owe its origin to an age not long anterior to the composition of the Brahmanas. The state of religious thought among the ancient bards, as reflected in the hymns of the Rigveda, is that of a worship of the grand and striking phenomena of nature regarded in the light of personal conscious beings, endowed with a power beyond the control of man, though not insen sible to his praises and actions. It is a nature-worship purer than that met with in any other polytheistic form of belief we are acquainted with, a mythology still comparatively little affected by those systematizing ten dencies which, in a less simple and primitive state of thought, lead to the construction of a well-ordered pantheon and a regular organization of divine government. To the mind of the early Vedic worshipper the various departments of the surrounding nature are not as yet clearly defined, and the functions which he assigns to their divine repre sentatives continually flow into one another. Nor has he yet learned to care to determine the relative worth and position of the objects of his adoration ; but the temporary influence of the phenomenon to which he addresses his praises bears too strongly upon his mind to allow him for the time to consider the claims of rival powers to which at other times he is wont to look up with equal feelings of awe and reverence. It is this immediateness of impulse under which the human mind in its infancy strives to give utterance to its emotions that imparts to many of its out pourings the ring of monotheistic fervour. The generic name given to these impersonations, viz., (leva (&quot; the shining ones &quot;), points to the conclusion, sufficiently justified by the nature of the more prominent objects of Vedic adoration as well as by common natural occurrences, that it was the beautiful phenomena of light which first and most powerfully swayed the Aryan mind. In the primitive worship of the manifold phenomena of nature it is not, of course, so much their physical aspect that impresses the human heart as the moral and intel lectual forces which are supposed to move and animate them. The attributes and relations of some of the Vedic deities, in accordance with the nature of the objects they represent, partake in a high degree of this spiritual element ; but it is not improbable that in an earlier phase of Aryan worship the religious conceptions were pervaded by it to a still greater and more general extent, and that the Vedic belief, though retaining many of the primitive features, has on the whole assumed a more sensuous and anthropo morphic character. This latter element is especially pre dominant in the attributes and imagery applied by the Vedic poets to Indra, the god of the atmospheric region, the favourite figure in their pantheon. While the repre sentatives of the prominent departments of nature appear to the Vedic bard as consisting in a state of independence of ^ one another, their relation to the mortal worshipper being the chief subject of his anxiety, a simple method of classification was already resorted to at an early time, con sisting in a triple division of the deities into gods residing in the sky, in the air, and on earth. It is not, however, until a later stage, the first clear indication being con veyed in a passage of the tenth book of the Rigveda, that this attempt at a polytheistic system is followed up by the promotion of one particular god to the dignity of chief guardian for each of these three regions. On the other hand, a tendency is clearly traceable in some of the hymns towards identifying gods whose functions present a certain degree of similarity of nature ; these attempts would seem to show a certain advance of religious reflec tion, the first steps from polytheism towards a compre hension of the unity of divine essence. Another feature of the old Vedic worship tended to a similar result. The great problems of the origin and existence of man and universe had early begun to engage the Hindu mind ; and in celebrating the praises of the gods the poet was fre quently led by his religious, and not wholly disinterested, zeal to attribute to them cosmical functions of the very highest order. At a later stage of thought, chiefly exhibited in the tenth book of the Rigveda and the Atharvaveda, inquiring sages could not but perceive the inconsistency of such concessions of a supremacy among the divine rulers, and tried to solve the problem by conceptions of an inde pendent power, endowed with all the attributes of a supreme deity, the creator of the universe, including the gods of the pantheon. The names under which this monotheistic idea is put forth are mostly of an attributive character, and indeed some of them, such as Prajdjxiti (&quot; lord of creatures &quot;), Visvakarman (&quot; all-doer &quot;), occur in the earlier hymns as mere epithets of particular gods. But to other minds this theory of a personal creator left many difficulties unsolved. They saw, as the poets of old had seen, that everything around them, that man himself, was directed by some inward agent ; and it needed but one step to perceive the essential sameness of these spiritual units, and to recognize their being but so many indivi dual manifestations of one universal principle. Thus a pantheistic conception was arrived at, put forth under various names, such as Purusha (&quot; soul&quot;), Kama (&quot;desire&quot;), Brahman (neutr. ; nom. sing. Irdhma) (&quot;devotion, prayer&quot;). Metaphysical and theosophic speculations were thus fast undermining the simple belief in the old gods, until, at the time of the composition of the Brahmanas and Upanishads, we find them in complete possession of the minds of the theologians. Whilst the theories crudely suggested in the later hymns are now further matured and elaborated, the tendency towards catholicity of formula favours the com bination of the conflicting monotheistic and pantheistic conceptions; this compromise, which makes Prajapati, the personal creator of the world, the manifestation of the impersonal Brahma, the universal self -existent soul, leads to the composite pantheistic system which forms the char acteristic dogma of the Brahmanical period. The spirit of Vedic worship is pervaded by a strong belief in the efficacy of invocation and sacrificial offering. The earnest and well-expressed prayer cannot fail to draw the divine power to the worshipper and make it yield to his supplication ; and offerings, so far from being mere acts of devotion which give pleasure to the god, represent the very food and drink which render him vigorous and capable of battling with the enemies of his mortal friend. This intrinsic power of invocation found an early expression in the term brdhma (neuter) (&quot;religious devotion, prayer, hymn&quot;); and its independent existence as an active moral principle in shaping the destinies of man became recognized in the Vedic pantheon in the conception of a god, Brihaspati or Brah- manaspati (&quot;lord of prayer&quot;), the guardian of the pious worshipper. This feature in the Hindu belief could scarcely fail early to engender and foster in the minds of the people feelings of esteem and reverence towards those who possessed the inspired gift of poetical expression, as 