Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/595

 The 07'igin of Monotheisui. 285

somewhat similar type. I doubt whether anyone would find in them traces of divine kingship, even with the aid of a prose commentary supplied by the most learned of the natives ; yet from other sources I obtained undoubted evidence of divine chiefs. These other sources are lacking for Vedic times. The silence of the Vedas is not, therefore, conclusive. The later evidence is not ambiguous. Indian kings are habitually addressed as deva^ gods. Mr. Louis H. Gray in Hastings' Encyclopaedia does indeed explain this away, contending that this does not imply " any divinity of the king, but merely, that he is as much superior to the lower castes as the gods are superior to mankind." The explanation is forced, and Mr. Gray produces evidence against himself ; he quotes Manu, vii. ^'], as saying " that when Brahman created the king he took eternal particles of Indra, of the Wind, of Yama, of the Sun, of Fire, of Varuna, of the Moon, and of Kubera," and again Manu, vii. 8, " The king is a great deity in human form." In Epic literature " a king or royal seer is called nara-deva (god of men) ; a priest is called bhumi-deva, ' earth god.' It is only as a god that a king may accept a gift. He is Indra, Yaruna, Kubera, and Yama incorporate." ^

The oldest records then show divine kingship full blown, and indeed this religion must have been very ancient to spread over so great a part of the world, from Benin to the South Seas, and beyond them to Peru.

Successive Incarnations.

We have seen that kings were worshipped in their life- time and after their death. In Egypt " as a divine son of Ra, the dead king became a patron-deity, theologically distinct from the ancestor-god, though one of his mani- festations " (Hastings, Encyclopaedia). Here lies, I think,

1 Hopkinson, Epic Mythology [Grundriss der Indo-Arischen philologie), p. 64.