Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/111

 1 The Pantheon of the Veda 95 tain amount of the complications and entanglements of human life must be imported into mythology be- fore it becomes mythology. Otherwise it remains philosophy, primitive cosmic philosophy, or primitive empirical natural science. Let me paraphrase a statement made some years ago in a learned journal.' Mythological investigation must draw a sharp line between the primary attri- butes of a mythic personage which are the cause of the personification, and the attributes and events which are assigned to him or her, and are supposed to happen after the personification had been com- pleted. Zeus, as we all know, originally meant "sky," and Zeus pater was the personified "Father Sky,' contrasted with "Mother Earth." But it would be foolish to search for these primary qualities of Zeus or the other Greek gods in a play of Euripides, where the gods are afflicted with all the passions and weak- nesses of mortal men. Yet he who refuses to myth- ologise on the basis of Euripides' treatment need not therefore be sceptical about the naturalistic origin of most of the Greek gods; he may be willing at the right time, and in the right stage of the history of any myth, to point out the physical factors or the phys- ical events which gave it a start. But to be pres- ent at the right time, that is not always so easy. 1 Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xv., pp. 185, 186.