Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/217

 Religious Conceptions and Feeling 201

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Occasionally a start is made towards a warmly glowing relation of love and conﬁdence; the singer in need of help trusts that the god will help him. But there is no permanent, clariﬁed, unselﬁsh love of the gods such as overrides the experience of their instability, such as lives down the melancholy fact that they do not always help. And we have seen What faith is in the Veda: it is the faith that mam- fests itself in works. The Vedic poets are trained “ mastermsingcrs.” Such poets are not likely to pene~ trate far into the soul of man. There is no real warmth or depth, no passionate indistinct feeling, no unsatisﬁed longing which can be made hopefully on. durable, or even pleasurable and exalting, through the mystery of a relationship with perfect beings, un— derstood by each individual soul in its own way. Anything like a contemplative, trustful oy in the per- fection of the gods comes much later: it is of the Bhagavadgita, rather than the Rig—Veda.

But these masterusingers do believe in their own art ; in their wonderful poetry, and in the exaltation of ' mind which goes with its composition. The gods accept both the poetry and the devout mind at the value put upon them by the poets; the poets are so— renely certain that the gods are well satisﬁed. 1 This

‘ “ Like (a cow) her calf so do the poets lick (the gods) with their prayers,” says Rig—Veda I0. 123. I.