Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/116

 The Religion of the Veda THE HE treatment of India's prehistoric gods takes on of itself the outer form of a chapter of Com- parative Mythology. We have seen in the past that the events which preceded the migration of the Aryas into India belong to two very different pre- historic periods. One of these is the period when the Hindu and Iranian (Persian) peoples, the so- called Aryas, were still one people, a period which does not lie so very far behind the Veda itself, just behind the curtain which separates the earliest his- torical records of both India and Iran from the very long past which preceded both of them. This is the Indo-Iranian, or Aryan period. The second is the still remoter period of Indo-European unity; the languages, institutions, and religions of this great group of peoples permit us to assume that there was once upon a time one Indo-European people, and that this people possessed religious ideas which were not altogether obliterated from the minds of their descendants, the Indo-Europeans of historical times (Hindus, Persians, Grecks, Romans, Celts, Teutons, Slavs, etc.). IOO It is my painful duty to report that there has been of recent years a great "slump" in the stock of this subject. In fact, some scholars, critics, and pub- licists have formally declared bankruptcy against the 1 See above, p. 13.