Page:History of India Vol 1.djvu/106

76 that are gone, future mornings will pursue this resplendent Ushas.

"Mortals who beheld the pristine Ushas have passed away; we behold her now; and men will come after us who will behold Ushas in the future."

Sarasvati, as her name implies, is the goddess of the river of that name, which was considered holy because of the religious rites performed on its banks and the sacred hymns uttered there. By a natural development of ideas, she was considered the goddess of those hymns, or in other words the goddess of speech, in which character she is worshipped now. She is the only Vedic goddess whose worship continues in India to the present day; all her modern companions, Durga, Kali, Lakshmi, and others, are creations of a later day.

There are no indications in the Rig-Veda of any "temples reared by mortal hands" and consecrated as places of worship. On the contrary, every householder, every patriarch of his family, lighted the sacrificial fire in his own home and poured libations of the Soma-juice and prayed to the gods for happiness to his family, for abundant crops and wealth and cattle, for immunity from sickness, and for victory over the black aborigines. There was no separate priestly caste, and men did not retire into forests and subject themselves to penances in order to meditate on religion and chant these hymns. On the contrary, the old Rishis were worldly men, men with considerable property in crops and in cattle and surrounded by large families, men who in times of danger exchanged the plough for the