Page:The religions of India.djvu/48

8 and defensive weapons, the plough, the furrow which has just been traced in the soil, are the objects, not of blessing only, but of prayer. India is radically pantheistic, and that from its cradle onwards. Nevertheless it is neither the direct adoration of objects, even the greatest, nor that of the obvious personifications of natural phenomena, which figures most prominently in the Hymns. Thus, Aurora is certainly a great goddess; the poets that praise her can find no colours bright enough or words passionate enough to greet this daughter of heaven, who reveals and dispenses all blessings, ushering in the days of the year and prolonging them to mortals. Her gifts are celebrated and her blessings implored, but her share in the cultus is small in comparison; it is not, as a rule, to her that the offerings go. Almost as much must be said of the deities Heaven and Earth, although they are still revered as the primitive pair by whom the rest of the gods were begotten. In the cultus they disappear before the more personal divinities; while in speculation they are gradually superseded by more abstract conceptions or by more recondite symbols. Of the stars there is hardly any mention. The moon plays only a subordinate part. The sun itself, which figures so prominently in the myth, no longer does so to the same extent in the religious consciousness, or at most it is worshipped by preference in some of its duplicate forms, which possess a more complex personality and have a more abstruse meaning. The two single divinities of the first rank which have preserved their physical character pure and simple are Agni and Soma. In their case, the visible and tangible objects were too near, and, above all, too sacred, to be in any greater or less degree obscured or outshone by mere personifications. Nevertheless, means