Two Old Faiths | Page 3

phenomena in India. Their effect on the religion.]
All physical phenomena in India are invested with a grandeur which
they do not possess in northern or even southern Europe. Sunlight,
moonlight, starlight, the clouds purpled with the beam of morning or
flaming in the west like fiery chariots of heaven; to behold these things
in their full magnificence one ought to see them in the East. Even so
the sterner phenomena of nature--whirlwind and tempest, lightning and
thunder, flood and storm-wave, plague, pestilence, and famine; all of
these oftentimes assume in the East a character of awful majesty before
which man cowers in helplessness and despair. The conceptions and
feelings hence arising have from the beginning powerfully affected the
religion of the Hindus. Every-where we can trace the impress of the
grander manifestations of nature--the impress of their beneficence, their
beauty, their might, their mystery, or their terribleness.

[Sidenote: The deities are "the bright ones," according to the language
of the sacred books of India.] The Sanskrit word for god is deva, which
means _bright, shining_. Of physical phenomena it was especially
those connected with light that enkindled feelings of reverence. The
black thunder-cloud that enshrouded nature, in which the demon had
bound the life-giving waters, passed away; for the glittering
thunder-bolt was launched, and the streams rushed down, exulting in
their freedom; and then the heaven shone out again, pure and peaceful
as before. But such a wonder as the dawn--with far-streaming radiance,
returning from the land of mystery, fresh in eternal youth, and
scattering the terrors of the night before her--who could sufficiently
admire? And let it be remembered that in the Hindu mind the interval
between admiration and adoration is exceedingly small. Yet, while it is
the dawn which has evoked the truest poetry, she has not retained the
highest place in worship.
[Sidenote: Fire much worshiped.] No divinity has fuller worship paid
him than Agni, the Fire (_Ignis_). More hymns are dedicated to him
than to any other being. Astonishment at the properties of fire; a sense
of his condescension in that he, a mighty god, resides in their dwellings;
his importance as the messenger between heaven and earth, bearing the
offerings aloft; his kindness at night in repelling the darkness and the
demons which it hides--all these things raised Agni to an exalted place.
He is fed with pure clarified butter, and so rises heavenward in his
brightness. The physical conception of fire, however, adheres to him,
and he never quite ceases to be the earthly flame; yet mystical
conceptions thickly gather round this root-idea; he is fire pervading all
nature; and he often becomes supreme, a god of gods.
[Sidenote: Soma highly exalted. Soma becomes a very mighty god.] All
this seems natural enough; but one is hardly prepared for the high
exaltation to which Soma is raised. Soma is properly the juice of a
milky plant (asclepias acida, or _sarcostemma viminale_), which,
when fermented, is intoxicating. The simple-minded Aryas were both
astonished and delighted at its effects; they liked it themselves; and
they knew nothing more precious to present to their gods. Accordingly,
all of these rejoice in it. Indra in particular quaffs it "like a thirsty stag;"

and under its exhilarating effects he strides victoriously to battle. Soma
itself becomes a god, and a very mighty one; he is even the creator and
father of the gods;[3] the king of gods and men;[4] all creatures are in
his hand. It is surely extraordinary that the Aryas could apply such
hyperbolical laudations to the liquor which they had made to trickle
into the vat, and which they knew to be the juice of a plant they had cut
down on the mountains and pounded in a mortar; and that intoxication
should be confounded with inspiration. Yet of such aberrations we
know the human mind is perfectly capable.
[Sidenote: Connection with Persian, Greek, and Roman systems.
Varuna, the god of heaven. The sublimity of the Vedic description of
him.] We have first referred to Agni and Soma, as being the only
divinities of highest rank which still retain their physical character. The
worship paid to them was of great antiquity; for it is also prescribed in
the Persian Avesta, and must have been common to the Indo-Iranian
branch of the Aryan race before the Hindus entered India. But we can
inferentially go still further back and speak of a deity common to the
Greeks, Romans, Persians, and Hindus. This deity is Varuna, the most
remarkable personality in the Veda. The name, which is etymologically
connected with [Greek: Ouranos], signifies "the encompasser," and is
applied to heaven--especially the all-encompassing, extreme vault of
heaven--not the nearer sky, which is the region of cloud and storm. It is
in describing Varuna that the Veda rises to the greatest sublimity