Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/109

 : 2 The Pantheon of the Veda 93 There are yet other possibilities which need not be mentioned, because we shall not follow their lead. Our own course, doubtless open to some objection, will be eclectic. We shall call up the more important Vedic gods under such various points of view as will bring out some one salient quality-which does not say that they may not have other qualities of great interest. Thus the chronological element must re- main immensely important. The chronology of the gods must influence to some extent our judgment of this ancient religion of the Veda. The old prehistoric gods that have been imported by the Aryas into India, no matter how much they have been Hindu- ised, will necessarily have characteristics of their own. Next come the gods which have been coined in hot haste out of the phenomena of nature in a glow- ing subtropical climate, or have been imbued anew with the vitality of India's imposing nature. These have not had time to forget their own origin-they arc, as I have called them, the gods of arrested per- sonification or arrested anthropomorphism. They are the beacon lights of Vedic religion, of Compara- tive Mythology, and of the Science of Religion. They are the rare guides and philosophers on this labyrinthine and rocky road; they have made the Veda the training-school of the study of religion. Since they show in a given number of cases just what