Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/65

Rh. This Varuṇa, again, was soon thought of in connection with another vague personification called Mitra (=the Persian Mithra), 'god of day.' After a time these impersonations of the celestial sphere were felt to be too vague to suit the growth of religious ideas in ordinary minds. Soon, therefore, the great investing firmament resolved itself into separate cosmical entities with separate powers and attributes. First, the watery atmosphere— personified under the name of Indra, ever seeking to dispense his dewy treasures (indu), though ever restrained by an opposing force or spirit of evil called Vṛitra; and, secondly, the wind—thought of either as a single personality named Vāyu, or as a whole assemblage of moving powers coming from every quarter of the compass, and impersonated as Maruts or 'Storm-gods.' At the same time in this process of decentralization—if I may use the term—the once purely celestial Varuṇa became relegated to a position among seven secondary deities of the heavenly sphere called Ādityas (afterwards increased to twelve, and regarded as diversified forms of the sun in the several months of the year), and subsequently to a dominion over the waters when they had left the air and rested on the earth.

Of these separately deified physical forces by far the most favourite object of adoration was the deity supposed to yield the dew and rain, longed for by Eastern cultivators of the soil with even greater cravings than by Northern agriculturists. Indra, therefore—the Jupiter Pluvius of early Indian mythology—is undoubtedly the principal divinity of Vedic worshippers, in so far at least as the greater number of their prayers and hymns are addressed to him.

What, however, could rain effect without the aid of heat? A force the intensity of which must have impressed an Indian mind with awe, and led him to invest the pos-