Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/192

160 BOOK and although the struggle in which he is constantly engaged has indefinitely affected the faith of Christendom, yet the deity himself has but little of a purely moral or spiritual element in his character. It is true that he is sometimes invoked as witnessing all the deeds of men and thus as taking cognisance of their sins; but the warfare which he has to wage is purely a physical conflict, and it is chiefly in the phrases by which his adversary is described, that we find the germs of the dualistic creed which bears the name of Zoroaster. Nowhere then, in the oldest monuments of Hindu thought, is the real character of Indra lost sight of His home is in the bright heaven; but, as his name denotes,^ he is specially the bringer of the most precious of all boons to a thirsty and gaping land. He is the giver of the rain which falls on the earth when the tyranny of the scorching wind is overpast.

The might In vain is Indra assailed in his career by the same enemies which destroy the infant Herakles. The Rakshasa fares no better Indra. than the snakes.

" Vyansa, exulting and striking hard blows, smote thee, Mag- havan, upon the jaw; whereupon, being so smitten, thou provedst the stronger and didst crush the head of the slave with the thunderbolt." ^ Like Herakles and Phoibos again, he has to go in search of lost or stolen cattle. With the conveying Maruts, " the traversers of places difficult of access," he discovers the cows hidden in their caves.

" Great is thy prowess, Indra, we are thine. Satisfy, Maghavan, the desires of thy worshipper. The vast heaven has acknowledged thy might ; this earth has been bowed down through thy vigour.

"Thou, thunderer, hast shattered with thy bolt the broad and massive cloud into fragments, and hast sent down the waters that were confined in it, to flow at will : verily thou alone posscssest all power."'

So, again, addressing Indra as Parjanya the rain-bringer, the poet says,

" The winds blow strong, the lightnings flash, the plants spring up, the firmament dissolves; earth becomes fit for all creatures, when Parjanya fertilises the soil with showers." *

" Master of tawny steeds, the remotest regions are not remote for thee."»

• " Indra, a name peculiar to India, Lectures en Language, second series, 430. admits of but one etymology, i.e. it * Rig Veda Sanhita, H. H. Wilson, must be derived from the same root, vol. iii. p. 156. whatever that may be, which in Sanskrit ' Ih. i. 154. ♦ lb. ii. 373. yielded indu, drop, sap." — Max Miillcr, ' Jb. iii. 37.