Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/45

 The Veda 29 much like and often identical with the hymns of the Atharva-Veda. On the whole and in the main, as we shall see, the Rig-Veda is a collection of priestly hymns addressed to the gods of the Vedic Pantheon. The chanting of these hymns is regularly accompanied by libations of the intoxicating drink called soma, and of melted butter, or ghee (ghrta). The enduring interest of the Rig Veda as literature lies in those old priestly poets' vision of the beauty, the majesty, and the power of the gods, and in the myths and legends told of them, or, more often, merely alluded to in connec- tion with them. But the paramount importance of the Rig-Veda is after all not as literature, but as philosophy. Its mythology represents a clearer, even if not always chronologically earlier stage of thought and religious development than is to be found in any parallel literature. On one side at least it is primitive in conception, and constructive under our very eyes: how a personal god develops by personification out of a visible fact in nature (anthropomorphosis) no literary document in the world teaches as well as the Rig-Veda. The original nature of the Vedic gods, however, is not always clear, not as clear as was once fondly thought. The analy- sis of these barely translucent, or altogether opaque characters makes up a chapter of Vedic science as