Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/198

 182 The Religion of the Veda

Indo~Persian time from which, if not from a still earlier time, dates their beginning. If these earlier data should by any chance ever show Indra. and Vritra in the mutual relation of summer and winter, then Hillebrandt’s hypothesis, and I fear not until then, would be triumphantly vindicated.

RELIGIOUS CONCEPTIONS AND RELIGIOUS FEELING IN THE VEDA.

The religion of the Rig-Veda, as we have seen, is in its most superﬁcial aspect a priestly religion of works designed to propitiate and to barter with personal gods. The outer form in which it pre- sents itself is as poetry of the sacriﬁce. The sac~ riﬁce with its ceremonial formalities is, as I have ventured to say, the epidermis of Vedic religion. In its next layer the religion of the Veda is ex... pressed in hymnal worship of the same personal gods who get the offerings. Whatever we may say about the origin of these gods, one by one, they are to the Hindu conception for the most part related to the visible and audible forces of nature. Nature in its larger aspect, cosmic nature, is the prime source of inspiration of the Vedic religious hard, just as it was the inspiration of his prehistoric Aryan and Indo- European ancestors. The conception of nature and the nature gods, notwithstanding many erudities, is

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