Hindu Gods and Heroes | Page 2

in this land, and now
have become slaves or serfs to their Aryan conquerors. Around the
village are fields where bullocks are dragging rough ploughs; and
beyond these are woods and moors in which lurk wild men, and beyond
these are the lands of other Aryan tribes. Life in the village is simple
and rude, but not uneventful, for the village is part of a tribe, and tribes
are constantly fighting with one another, as well as with the
dark-skinned men who often try to drive back the Aryans, sometimes in
small forays and sometimes in massed hordes. But the world in which
the village is interested is a small one, and hardly extends beyond the
bounds of the land where its tribe dwells. It knows something of the
land of the Five Rivers, in one corner of which it lives, and something
even of the lands to the north of it, and to the west as far as the
mountains and deserts, where live men of its own kind and tongue; but
beyond these limits it has no knowledge. Only a few bold spirits have
travelled eastward across the high slope that divides the land of the
Five Rivers from the strange and mysterious countries around the great
rivers Ganga and Yamuna, the unknown land of deep forests and
swarming dark-skinned men.
In the matter of religion these Aryans care a good deal about charms
and spells, black and white magic, for preventing or curing all kinds of
diseases or mishaps, for winning success in love and war and trade and
husbandry, for bringing harm upon enemies or rivals--charms which a

few centuries later will be dressed up in Rigvedic style, stuffed out with
imitations of Rigvedic hymns, and published under the name of
Atharva veda, "the lore of the Atharvans," by wizards who claim to
belong to the old priestly clans of Atharvan and Angiras. But we have
not yet come so far, and as yet all that these people can tell us is a great
deal about their black and white magic, in which they are hugely
interested, and a fair amount about certain valiant men of olden times
who are now worshipped by them as helpful spirits, and a little about
some vague spirits who are in the sun and the air and the fire and other
places, and are very high and great, but are not interesting at all.
This popular religion seems to be a hopeless one, without ideals and
symbols of love and hope. Is there nothing better to be found in this
place? Yes, there is a priestly religion also; and if we would know
something about it we must listen to the chanting of the priests, the
brahmans or men of the "holy spirit," as they are called, who are
holding a sacrifice now on behalf of the rich lord who lives in the
largest house in the village--a service for which they expect to be paid
with a handsome fee of oxen and gold. They are priests by heredity,
wise in the knowledge of the ways of the gods; some of them
understand how to compose riks, or hymns, in the fine speech dear to
their order, hymns which are almost sure to win the gods' favour, and
all of them know how the sacrifices shall be performed with perfect
exactness so that no slip or imperfection may mar their efficacy. Their
psalms are called Rig-veda, "lore of the verses," and they set
themselves to find grace in the ears of the many gods whom these
priests worship, sometimes by open praise and sometimes by riddling
description of the exploits and nature of the gods. Often they are very
fine; but always they are the work of priests, artists in ritual. And if you
look heedfully into it you will also mark that these priests are inclined
to think that the act of sacrifice, the offering of, say, certain oblations in
a particular manner with particular words accompanying them, is in
itself potent, quite apart from the psalms which they sing over it, that it
has a magic power of its own over the machinery of nature.[1] Really
this is no new idea of our Vedic priests; ten thousand years before them
their remote forefathers believed it and acted upon it, and if for
example they wanted rain they would sprinkle drops of water and utter

magic words. Our Vedic priests have now a different kind of symbols,
but all the same they still have the notion that ceremony, rita as they
call it, has a magic potency of its own. Let us mark this well, for we
shall see much issuing from it.
[Footnote 1: Cf. e.g. RV. III. xxxii. 12.]
Who are the gods to whom these priests offer their