Page:Monier Monier-Williams - Indian Wisdom.djvu/67

 Dyaus, ' heaven.' This imaginary marriage of heaven and earth was indeed a most natural idea, and much of the later mythology may be explained by it. But it is remarkable that as religious worship became of a more selfish character, the earth, being more evidently under man's control, and not seeming to need propitiation so urgently as the more uncertain air, fire, and water, lost importance among the gods, and was rarely addressed in prayer or hymn.

It may conduce to a better appreciation of the succeeding hymns if it be borne in mind that the deified forces addressed in them were probably not represented by images or idols in the Vedic period, though, doubtless, the early worshippers clothed their gods with human form in their own imaginations1.

I now commence my examples with a nearly literal translation of the well-known sixteenth hymn of the fourth book of the Atharva-veda, in praise of Varuna or ' the Investing Sky2:'

1 See Dr. Muir's Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 453.

' Ably translated by Dr. Muir (Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 63) and by Professor Max Miiller. It may be thought that in giving additional translations of this and other hymns I am going over ground already well trodden; but it should be borne in mind that as the design of these Lectures is to illustrate continuously the development of Hindu knowledge and literature by a selection of good examples rendered into idiomatic English, I could not, in common justice to such a subject, exclude the best passages in each department of the literature merely because they have been translated by others. I here, however, once for all acknowledge with gratitude that, while making versions of my own, I have derived the greatest assistance from Dr. Muir's scholarlike translations and poetical paraphrases (given in his Texts), as well as from Professor Max Miiller's works and those of Professor A. Weber of Berlin. It must be understood that my examples are not put forth as offering rival translations. They are generally intended to be as literal as possible consistently with the observance of English idiom, and on that account I have preferred blank verse; but occasionally they are paraphrases rather than