Page:History of Indian and Eastern Architecture Vol 1.djvu/70

 4 o HISTORY OF INDIAN ARCHITECTURE. Aryans was addressed to the sun and moon ; the firmament and all its hosts ; the rain-bearing cloud ; the sun-ushering dawn. All that was beautiful in the heavens above or beneficent on earth, was sung by them in hymns of elevated praise, and addressed in terms of awe or endearment as fear or hope pre- vailed in the bosom of the worshipper. 1 Had this gone on for some time longer than it did, the objects worshipped by the Aryans in India might have become imaged as gods, like those of Greece and Rome, endowed with all the feelings and all the failings of humanity. In India it was otherwise ; the deities were dethroned, but were not degraded. There is no trace in Vedic times, so far as at present known, of Indra or Varuna, of Agni or Ushas, being represented in wood or stone, or of their requiring houses or temples to shelter them. It is true indeed that the terms of endearment in which they are addressed are frequently such as mortals use in speaking of each other ; but how otherwise can man express his feeling of love or fear, or address his supplication to the being whose assistance he implores ? The great beauty of the Veda is, that it stops short before the powers of nature are dwarfed into human forms, and when every man stood independently by himself, and sought through the intervention of all that was great or glorious on the earth, or in the skies, to approach the great spirit that is beyond and above all created things. Had the Aryans been a numerical majority in India, and able to preserve their blood and caste in tolerable purity, the religion of India could hardly ever have sunk so low as it did, though it might have fallen below the standard of the Veda. What really destroyed it was, that each succeeding immigration of less pure Aryan or of Turanian races rendered their numerical majority relatively less and less, while their inevitable influence so educated the subject races as to render their moral majority even less important. These processes went on steadily and uninterruptedly till, in the time of Buddha, the native religions rose fairly to an equality with that of the Aryans, and after- wards for a while eclipsed it. The Vedas were only ultimately saved from absolute annihilation in India, by being connected with the Vaishnava and Saiva superstitions, where their inanimate forms may still be recognised, but painfully degraded from their primitive elevation. When we turn from the Vedas, and try to investigate the origin of those religions that finally absorbed the Vedas in 1 The ritual of the Veda is chiefly, if not wholly, addressed to the elements, particu- larly to fire. H. H. Wilson, 'Asiatic Re- searches,' vol. xvii. p. 194 ; ibid., p. 614. Conf. Bergaigne, 'La Religion Vedique' ; Oldenburg, ' Die Religion des Veda, '