Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/191

Rh clouds had passed away, men beheld the face of the mighty deity CHAP. who was their friend. So completely does the older mythology of the Veda carry us away from the one idea which must be first awakened by the genuine religious instinct of mankind.

No stronger evidence than that which is furnished by this con- The Greek trast could be adduced to show that in no single feature Is the mythology of our Homeric poems borrowed from the people who rowed betook themselves to the banks of the Indus and the Ganges. The Vedic. Vedic Dyaus may in all essential features be reproduced in the Hellenic Zeus. Like Phoibos Chrysaor, Indra may bear a lance or an arrow, which can never miss its mark : but in the one case we have a mere sketch, in the other a finished picture ; and the differ- ences in the character of the detail preclude all idea that for either Zeus or Hermes, Helen or Paris, Erinys or Achilleus, the Achaian poets were indebted to the Vedic Dyaus or Sarameya, to Pani or Sarama, to Saranyii or Aharj'u. To one common source they do indeed point; and the several stages of developement which mark the early mythologies of India and Hellas leave us in no doubt of the nature of the germ from which they spring.

At once, then, we turn away from the cumbrous and complicated Indra, a mytholog}' of the later Vedic literature,^ as from the uncouth outgrowths of the Orphic theogony we turn to the earlier phases in heaven, which the Greek epic and lyric poets exhibit their ancestral deities. We are not concerned with the later conflicts of Indra, which end in his being bound by Indragit,^ while we have before us a series of songs which speak of him simply as the invincible god of the bright heaven. Yet, although there still remains a large difference between Indra and Apollon, too great stress can scarcely be laid on the fact that as we trace the Vedic gods as far back as the Veda itself will carry us, the essential likeness between the Hindu and the Hellenic deities becomes more and more striking. If further we find that, when thus examined, their functions become, if the expression may be used, more and more atmospheric, — if they become the powers which produce the sights of the changing sky, — if their great wars are waged in regions far above the abodes of men, the last blow is given to the theory which by the most arbitrary of assumptions finds the root of all mythology in the religious instincts of mankind.

In the Vedic Indra there is this further peculiarity, that, although >reaiiing his name ceased, like that of Dyaus, to be chiefly a name for the sky,

' See the remarks quoted by Pro- • A summary of the story of Indra fessor Max Miiller from Professor Roth and Indragit is given by Dr. Muir, {Sanskrit Li/era/ure, bo). Sanskrit Texts, iv. p. 422.