Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 6 (Indian and Iranian).djvu/128

84 viii. 19) we find added to Rudra's names those of Śiva, Śaṅkara, Hara, and Mṛda, all appellatives of Śiva.

In addition to the strong evolution of monotheistic tendencies in the shape of the worship of these three great divinities, we must note the definite setting up of the Asuras as enemies to the gods. This trend is a marked change from the point of view of the Ṛgveda, where the term "Asura" normally applies to the gods themselves and where the conflict of the demons and the gods takes the form of struggles between individual Asuras and gods rather than between the host of the Asuras and the gods, both sprung from Prajāpati, as the Brāhmaṇas often declare. In this phenomenon, coupled with the fact that the Iranians treated daēva, the word corresponding to the Vedic deva, "god," as meaning "devil," it is natural to see a result of hostile relations between the Iranian reformed faith of Zoroaster and the older Vedic belief; but the suggestion is inseparably bound up with the further question whether or not the Ṛgveda and the Brāhmaṇas show traces of close connexion with Iran. In support of the theory may be adduced the fact that the Kavis who are popular in Indian literature are heretics in the Avesta; while, on the other hand, Kāvya Uśanas, who is the purohita of the Asuras in the Pañcaviṁśa Brāhmaṇa (VII. v. 20), is famed as Kavi Usan, or Kai Kāūs, in Iran. Other Asuras with names possibly borrowed from Iran are Śaṇḍa and Marka (with whom is compared the Avestan mahrka, "death"), Prahrāda Kāyādhava, and Sṛma; but the evidence is much too feeble to afford any positive conclusion, and the other explanation of natural development of meaning in both countries is possible enough, for in the Veda Asura is specially connected with the word māyā, "power of illusion," and may well have denoted one of magic, uncanny power, a sense which would easily lead to an unfavourable meaning. The degradation of Asuras from gods to demons was doubtless helped by the apparent form of the word as a negative of sura, from the base svar, denoting "light," for by the time of the Upaniṣads