Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/76

 LECTURE THE SECOND. The IIicratic Religion.-The Pantheon of the Veda. Fundamental traits of early Vedic religion Fake view of the nature of Vedic poetry The Rig-Veda as surificial poetry-Difficulty of understanding the ritual char- acter of the Rig-Veda-Poetry addressed to the Goddess Dawn-A hymn to the sacrifice post--The goddess Dawn as the symbol of liberality at the sacrifice - Some erroneous estimates of Goddess Dawn -Agni the son of "Baksheesh "-Practical purposes of Vedic poetry The Rig-Veda contains the religion of the upper classes - The ritual of the Rig-Veda-The pri-hymns --Nature- worship the keynote of the Rig-Veda India's climate and nature-worship-Vedic and Hellenic mythology compared Arrested anthropomorphism-Definition of the word Pantheon as applied to the Veda-Faulty classifications of the Vedic gods-Chronology of the gods-Different degrees of certainty about the origin of the gods-Classification of the gods in these lectures. THE HE religion which is contained in the bulk of the so-called "revealed " (çrauta) Vedic litera- ture, that is in the main body of the hymns of the Rig-Veda, the Yajur-Veda, the Sama-Veda, and the Brahmanas, is a hieratic or priestly religion. As re- gards its mechanism, or its external practices, it is unmistakably liturgic or ritualistic. As regards its 60