Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/139

Rh CHAPTER XVI.

GODS OF THE ARYANS OF INDIA.

Difficulties of the study—Development of clan-gods—Departmental gods—Divine patronage of morality—Immorality mythically attributed to gods—Indra—His love of Soma—Scandal about Indra—Attempts to explain Indra as an elemental god—Varuna—Ushas—The Asvins—Their legend and theories about it—Tvashtri—The Maruts—Conclusions arrived at.

in all mythology is more difficult than the attempt to get a clear view of the gods of Vedic India. The perplexed nature of the evidence has already been explained, and may be briefly recapitulated. The obscure documents on which we have to rely, the Vedas and the Brahmanas, contain in solution the opinions of many different ages and of many different minds. Old and comparatively modern conceptions of the deities, pious efforts to veil or to explain away what seemed crude or profane, the puerilities of ritual, half-conscious strivings in the direction of monotheism or pantheism, clan or family prejudices, rough etymological guesses, and many other elements of doubt combine to confuse what can never have been clear. Savage legends, philosophic conjectures, individual