Page:The religions of India.djvu/52

12 In the other divinities the physical character is more effaced. Occasionally it is preserved only in the myth or in a limited number of attributes ; and even in that case it is not always easy to determine it with precision. For the religious consciousness they are personal deities ; and in general the greater the deity is the more pronounced and complex is the personality. Indra, he who of all these is invoked most frequently, is the king of heaven and the national god of the Aryans ;i he gives victory to his people, and is always ready to take in hand the cause of his ser- vants. But it is in heaven, in the atmosphere, that he fights his great battles for the deliverance of the waters, the cows, the spouses of the gods, kept captive by the demons. It is here that, intoxicated with the soma, he strikes down with his thunderbolt Vritra, the coverer, Ahi, the dragon, ^ushna, the witherer, and a crowd of other monsters ; that he breaks open the brazen strongholds of ^ambara, the demon with the club, and the cave of Yala, the concealer of stolen goods ; and that, guided by Sarama, his faithful dog, and roused to fury by the song of the Angiras, he comes to snatch from the cunning Panis what they have pilfered.^ In these combats, which are now represented as exploits of a remote past, and again as a perennial struggle which is renewed every day, he is some- times assisted by other gods, such as Soma, Agni, his companion Vishnu, or his bodyguards the Maruts.^ But he more frequently fights alone ; * and, indeed, he has no need of assistance from others, so vast is his strength and so certain his victory.^ Once only is he said to have been

see especially the work of A. Ber- io8. For the basis of these myths gaigne already cited, La Eeligion and the expression given to them iu Vedique d'apres les Hymnes, and the other mythologies, see the me- the paper of the same author, Les moir of M. Breal, Hercule et Cacus, Figures de Rhetorique dans le Rig- Etude de Mythologie Comparee, 1863. Yeda, in Memoires de la Societe de ^ Rig- Veda, iv. 28, ; ix. 61, 22 ; Linguistique de Paris, t. iv. 96. iii. 12, 6 ; i. 22, 19 ; iv. 18, II ; viii. 1 Rig- Veda, i. 51, 8; 130, 8 ; ii. lOO, 12; iii. 47, &c. II, I'S ; iv, 26, 2 ; viii. 92, 32, &c. ^ Rig- Veda, i. 165, 8 ; vii. 21, 6 ; ■^ Of the countless passages which x. 138, 6, &c. refer to these struggles we shall ^ Rig- Veda, i. 165, 9, lO. mention only Rig- Veda, i. 32 and x.