Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/171

 Transparent and Opaque Gods 155

That glow above the darkness we Beholding upward soar to thee, For there among the gods thy light Supreme is seen, divinely bright.

And there are other gods, not a few, whose origin in nature is positively on the surface. So the two wind~gods Vata and Vayu, the former of whom, on the likely evidence of Teutonic WotamOdhin, is probably prehistoric. A good bit of profound human philosophy is contained in the mere fact that Vata is described as a real person in language such as that of the following hymn,ll and that he may ﬁnally be invited to partake of oblations :

Hyma to Vote

Now Vata’s chariot’s greatness ! Breaking goes it,

And thunderous is its noise. To heaven it touches,

Makes light lurid, and whirls the dust upon the earth.

Then rush together all the blasts of Vata :

To him they come as women to their trysting ; With them conjoint, on the same chariot travelling, Hastes the god, the king of all creation.

Sleepless hastes he on his pathway through the air, Companion of the watery ﬂood. First—born and.

holy,

1 Rig-Veda 10.168, reproduced with some changes from Professor Hopkins’s translation, 7726 Religion: of India, p. 88.