Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/246

 2 30 The Religion of the Veda

we read between the lines, there are those who mock Indra, and those who apologise for him :

“Bring lovely praise to Indra, vying one with the other, truthful praise, if he himself be true. Even though one or another says: ‘Indra is not, who ever saw him, who is he that we should praise him?" ”

(Rig~Veda 8. 100 3.) Or again :

“ The terrible one of whom they ask, ‘where is he?’

Nay verily they say of him, ‘he is not: at: all'.

He makes shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler

the stakes of his opponent :: Put your faith in him—"He, 0 folks, is Indra." (Rig—Veda 2. r2 5.)

Hence they that have no faith are called agmdd/m, “ infidel,” or cmz'rzdm, “repudiators of Indra." ‘

Every onward movement of Hindu thought takes place at the expense of the old gods of nature; the divine attribute becomes more important than the mythological person. The individual natural history of the gods becomes a thing of minor interest. In this sense polytheism is decadent even in the hymns of the Rig-Veda themselves. It shows signs of going to seed for philosophy. The gods in turn perform about the same feats of creating and up- holding the world: the interest of the poets in the acts has evidently increased at the expense of the

'Rig-Veda 7. 6. 3 and 5. a. 3. ; IO. 48. 7.