Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/596

 286 The Origin of Monotheism.

the germ from which has grown the idea of one universal god. I will first make a supposition.

Suppose the kings of England are incarnations of Odin ; then King Edward VII. would be Odin incarnate, but temples would be dedicated to him under the name of Edward. King George A', would succeed him as Odin on earth, but would also be worshipped under the name of George ; but since King Edward and King George are both Odin, they must both be the same ; they would also be the same persons as the many kings of England that have reigned since the conquest.

Evidence that this has actually happened is scarce, and I cannot as yet find any that is earlier than Indian Mytho- logy. Yet such evidence serves to show that the process I have described is not altogether fanciful, but actually takes place. The Indian god \'ishnu has ten incarnations ; each incarnation is worshipped in its own right, so to speak, but it is not forgotten that it is the same as Vishnu. One of the incarnations is Rama, whom legend represents as king on earth, and I think most scholars will agree that this personage is historical ; but it makes little dift'erence whether he is historical or merely a natural phenomenon. To the Indian he is a king, and to the Indian mind it is, therefore, conceivable that a king may be the same as a god. Another of Vishnu's incarnations is Krishna, also a man on earth, Rama is Vishnu, and Krishna is Mshnu ; therefore Rama and Krishna are one. The Indian has drawn this conclusion, for we have a god called Rama- Krishna, just as there is a Krishna- Vishnu.^

1 Hopkinson, Epic Mythology, p. 3. Here perhaps we have the ke}- to a curious feature of Indian rehgion. Aheady in the Vedas gods are frequently coupled and worshipped in pairs, thus Mitra-Varuna, Indra- Brihaspati, Agni-Soma. Possibly gods so coupled are incarnations of the same god, or one is the incarnation of the other. If this explanation is right the number of primary gods in the Indian pantheon must be very small ; most of them are secondary- gods, that is incarnations of the primary ones.