The Sanskrit Epics, page 976
Plants are frequently invoked as divinities, chiefly in enumerations along with waters, rivers, mountains, heaven, and earth. One entire hymn (x. 97) is, however, devoted to the praise of plants (oshadhi) alone, mainly with regard to their healing powers. Later Vedic texts mention offerings made to plants and the adoration paid to large trees passed in marriage processions. One hymn of the Rigveda (x. 146) celebrates the forest as a whole, personified as Araṇyānī, the mocking genius of the woods. The weird sights and sounds of the gloaming are here described with a fine perception of nature. In the dark solitudes of the jungle
Sounds as of grazing cows are heard,
A dwelling-house appears to loom,
And Araṇyānī, Forest-nymph,
Creaks like a cart at eventide.
Here some one calls his cow to him,
Another there is felling wood;
Who tarries in the forest-glade
Thinks to himself, “I heard a cry.”
Never does Araṇyānī hurt
Unless one goes too near to her:
When she has eaten of sweet fruit
At her own will she goes to rest.
Sweet-scented, redolent of balm,
Replete with food, yet tilling not,
Mother of beasts, the Forest-nymph,
Her I have magnified with praise.
On the whole, however, the part played by plant, tree, and forest deities is a very insignificant one in the Rigveda.
A strange religious feature pointing to a remote antiquity is the occasional deification and worship even of objects fashioned by the hand of man, when regarded as useful to him. These are chiefly sacrificial implements. Thus in one hymn (iii. 8) the sacrificial post (called “lord of the forest”) is invoked, while three hymns of the tenth book celebrate the pressing stones used in preparing soma. The plough is invoked in a few stanzas; and an entire hymn (vi. 75) is devoted to the praise of various implements of war, while one in the Atharva-veda (v. 20) glorifies the drum.
The demons so frequently mentioned in the Rigveda are of two classes. The one consists of the aërial adversaries of the gods. The older view is that of a conflict waged between a single god and a single demon. This gradually developed into the notion of the gods and the demons in general being arrayed against each other as two opposing hosts. The Brāhmaṇas regularly represent the antagonism thus. Asura is the ordinary name of the aërial foes of the gods. This word has a remarkable history. In the Rigveda it is predominantly a designation of the gods, and in the Avesta it denotes, in the form of Ahura, the highest god of Zoroastrianism. In the later parts of the Rigveda, however, asura, when used by itself, also signifies “demon,” and this is its only sense in the Atharva-veda. A somewhat unsuccessful attempt has been made to explain how a word signifying “god” came to mean “devil,” as the result of national conflicts, the Asuras or gods of extra-Vedic tribes becoming demons to the Vedic Indian, just as the devas or gods of the Veda are demons in the Avesta. There is no traditional evidence in support of this view, and it is opposed by the fact that to the Rigvedic Indian asura not only in general meant a divine being, but was especially appropriate to Varuṇa, the most exalted of the gods. The word must therefore have changed its meaning in course of time within the Veda itself. Here it seems from the beginning to have had the sense of “possessor of occult power,” and hence to have been potentially applicable to hostile beings. Thus in one hymn of the Rigveda (x. 124) both senses seem to occur. Towards the end of the Rigvedic period the application of the word to the gods began to fall into abeyance. This tendency was in all likelihood accelerated by the need of a word denoting the hostile demoniac powers generally, as well as by an incipient popular etymology, which saw a negative (a-sura) in the word and led to the invention of sura, “god,” a term first found in the Upanishads.
A group of aërial demons, primarily foes of Indra, are the Paṇis. The proper meaning of the word is “niggard,” especially in regard to sacrificial gifts. From this signification it developed the mythological sense of demons resembling those originally conceived as withholding the treasures of heaven. The term dāsa or dasyu, properly the designation of the dark aborigines of India contrasted with their fair Aryan conquerors, is frequently used in the sense of demons or fiends.
By far the most conspicuous of the individual aërial demons of the Rigveda, is Vṛitra, who has the form of a serpent, and whose name means “encompasser.” Another demon mentioned with some frequency is Vala, the personification of the mythical cave in which the celestial cows are confined. In post-Vedic literature these two demons are frequently mentioned together and are regarded as brothers slain by Indra. The most often named among the remaining adversaries of Indra is Çushṇa, the “hisser” or “scorcher.” A rarely-mentioned demon is Svarbhānu, who is described as eclipsing the sun with darkness. His successor in Sanskrit literature was Rāhu, regarded as causing eclipses by swallowing the sun or moon.
The second class of demons consists of goblins supposed to infest the earth, enemies of mankind as the Asuras are of the gods. By far the most common generic name for this class is Rakshas. They are hardly ever mentioned except in connection with some god who is invoked to destroy or is praised for having destroyed them. These goblins are conceived as having the shapes of various animals as well as of men. Their appearance is more fully described by the Atharvaveda, in which they are also spoken of as deformed or as being blue, yellow, or green in colour. According to the Rigveda they are fond of the flesh of men and horses, whom they attack by entering into them in order to satisfy their greed. They are supposed to prowl about at night and to make the sacrifice the special object of their attacks. The belief that the Rakshases actively interfere with the performance of sacrificial rites remains familiar in the post-Vedic period. A species of goblin scarcely referred to in the Rigveda, but often mentioned in the later Vedas, are the Piçāchas, described as devouring corpses and closely connected with the dead.
Few references to death and the future life are to be found in the hymns of the Rigveda, as the optimistic and active Vedic Indian, unlike his descendants in later centuries, seems to have given little thought to the other world. Most of the information to be gained about their views of the next life are to be found in the funeral hymns of the last book. The belief here expressed is that fire or the grave destroys the body only, while the real personality of the deceased is imperishable. The soul is thought to be separable from the body, not only after death, but even during unconsciousness (x. 58). There is no indication here, or even in the later Vedas, of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, though it was already firmly established in the sixth century B.C. when Buddhism arose. One passage of the Rigveda, however, in which the soul is spoken of as departing to the waters or the plants, may contain the germs of the theory.
1 In verse 10, which is a late addition; see , footnote.
2 A reference to dropsy, with which Varuṇa is thought to afflict sinners.
Chapter V
Philosophy of the Rigveda
ACCORDING TO THE Vedic view, the spirit of the deceased proceeded to the realm of eternal light on the path trodden by the fathers, whom he finds in the highest heaven revelling with Yama, king of the dead, and feasting with the gods.
In one of the funeral hymns (x. 14, 7) the dead man is thus addressed: —
Go forth, go forth along those ancient pathways
To where our early ancestors departed.
There thou shalt see rejoicing in libations
The two kings, Varuṇa the god and Yama.
Here a tree spreads its branches, in the shade of which Yama drinks soma with the gods, and the sound of the flute and of songs is heard. The life in heaven is free from imperfections or bodily frailties, and is altogether delectable. It is a glorified life of material joys as conceived by the imagination, not of warriors, but of priests. Heaven is gained as a reward by heroes who risk their lives in battle, but above all by those who bestow liberal sacrificial gifts on priests.
Though the Atharva-veda undoubtedly shows a belief in a place of future punishment, the utmost that can be inferred with regard to the Rigveda from the scanty evidence we possess, is the notion that unbelievers were consigned to an underground darkness after death. So little, indeed, do the Rishis say on this subject, and so vague is the little they do say, that Roth held the total annihilation of the wicked by death to be their belief. The early Indian notions about future punishment gradually developed, till, in the post-Vedic period, a complicated system of hells had been elaborated.
Some passages of the Rigveda distinguish the path of the fathers or dead ancestors from the path of the gods, doubtless because cremation appeared as a different process from sacrifice. In the Brāhmaṇas the fathers and the gods are thought to dwell in distinct abodes, for the “heavenly world” is contrasted with the “world of the fathers.”
The chief of the blessed dead is Yama, to whom three entire hymns are addressed. He is spoken of as a king who rules the departed and as a gatherer of the people, who gives the deceased a resting-place and prepares an abode for him. Yama it was who first discovered the way to the other world: —
Him who along the mighty heights departed,
Him who searched and spied out the path for many,
Son of Vivasvat, gatherer of the people,
Yama the king, with sacrifices worship. (x. 14, 1).
Though death is the path of Yama, and he must consequently have been regarded with a certain amount of fear, he is not yet in the Rigveda, as in the Atharvaveda and the later mythology, a god of death. The owl and pigeon are occasionally mentioned as emissaries of Yama, but his regular messengers are two dogs which guard the path trodden by the dead proceeding to the other world.
With reference to them the deceased man is thus addressed in one of the funeral hymns (x. 14): —
Run on thy path straight forward past the two dogs,
The sons of Saramā, four-eyed and brindled,
Draw near thereafter to the bounteous fathers,
Who revel on in company with Yama.
Broad-nosed and brown, the messengers of Yama,
Greedy of lives, wander among the people:
May they give back to us a life auspicious
Here and to-day, that we may see the sunlight.
The name of Yama is sometimes used in the Rigveda in its primary sense of “twin,” and the chief of the dead actually occurs in this character throughout a hymn (x. 10) of much poetic beauty, consisting of a dialogue between him and his sister Yamī. She endeavours to win his love, but he repels her advances with these words: —
The spies sent by the gods here ever wander,
They stand not still, nor close their eyes in slumber:
Another man thine arms shall clasp, O Yamī,
Tightly as twines around the tree the creeper.
The incestuous union which forms the main theme of the poem, though rejected as contrary to the higher ethical standard of the Rigveda, was doubtless the survival of an already existing myth of the descent of mankind from primeval “twins.” This myth, indeed, seems to have been handed down from the Indo-Iranian period, for the later Avestan literature makes mention of Yimeh as a sister of Yima. Even the name of Yama’s father goes back to that period, for Yima is the son of Vivanhvant in the Avesta as Yama is of Vivasvat in the Rigveda.
The great bulk of the Rigvedic poems comprises invocations of gods or deified objects as described in the foregoing pages. Scattered among them are to be found, chiefly in the tenth book, about a dozen mythological pieces consisting of dialogues which, in a vague and fragmentary way, indicate the course of the action and refer to past events. In all likelihood they were originally accompanied by a narrative setting in prose, which explained the situation more fully to the audience, but was lost after these poems were incorporated among the collected hymns of the Rigveda. One of this class (iv. 42) is a colloquy between Indra and Varuṇa, in which each of these leading gods puts forward his claims to pre-eminence. Another, which shows considerable poetic merit and presents the situation clearly, is a dialogue in alternate verses between Varuṇa and Agni (x. 51), followed by a second (x. 52) between the gods and Agni, who has grown weary of his sacrificial office, but finally agrees to continue the performance of his duties.
A curious but prosaic and obscure hymn (x. 86), consists of a dialogue between Indra and his wife Indrāṇī on the subject of a monkey which has incurred the anger of the latter. The circumstances are much more clearly presented in a poem of great beauty (x. 108), in which Saramā, the messenger of Indra, having tracked the stolen cows, demands them back from the Paṇis. Another already referred to () treats the myth of Urvaçī and Purūravas. The dialogue takes place at the moment when the nymph is about to quit her mortal lover for ever. A good deal of interest attaches to this myth, not only as the oldest Indo-European love-story, but as one which has had a long history in Indian literature. The dialogue of Yama and Yamī (x. 10) is, as we have seen, based on a still older myth. These mythological ballads, if I may use the expression, foreshadow the dramatic and epic poetry of a later age.
A very small number, hardly more than thirty altogether, of the hymns of the Rigveda are not addressed to the gods or deified objects. About a dozen poems, occurring almost exclusively in the tenth book, are concerned with magical notions, and therefore belong rather to the domain of the Atharva-veda, Two short ones (ii. 42–43) belong to the sphere of augury, certain birds of omen being invoked to utter auspicious cries. Two others consist of spells directed against poisonous vermin (i. 191), and the disease called yakshma (x. 163). Two are incantations to preserve the life of one lying at the point of death (x. 58; 60, 7–12). A couple of stanzas from one of the latter may serve as a specimen: —
Just as a yoke with leathern thong
They fasten on that it may hold:
So have I now held fast thy soul,
That thou mayst live and mayst not die,
Anon to be unhurt and well.
Downward is blown the blast of wind,
Downward the burning sunbeams shoot,
Adown the milk streams from the cow:
So downward may thy ailment go.
Here is a stanza from a poem intended as a charm to induce slumber (v. 55): —
The man who sits and he who walks,
And he who sees us with his gaze:
Of these we now close up the eyes,
Just as we shut this dwelling-house.
The first three stanzas of this lullaby end with the refrain, “Fall fast asleep” (ni shu shvapa).
The purpose of one incantation (x. 183) is to procure children, while another (x. 162) is directed against the demon that destroys offspring. There is also a spell (x. 166) aiming at the destruction of enemies. We further find the incantation (x. 145) of a woman desiring to oust her rival wives from the affections of her husband. A sequel to it is formed by the song of triumph (x. 159) of one who has succeeded in this object: —
Up has arisen there the sun,
So too my fortunes now arise:
With craft victorious I have gained
Over my lord this victory.
My sons now mighty warriors are,
My daughter is a princess now,
And I myself have gained the day:
My name stands highest with my lord.
Vanquished have I these rival wives,
Rising superior to them all,
That over this heroic man
And all this people I may rule.
With regard to a late hymn (vii. 103), which is entirely secular in style, there is some doubt as to its original purpose. The awakening of the frogs at the beginning of the rainy season is here described with a graphic power which will doubtless be appreciated best by those who have lived in India. The poet compares the din of their croaking with the chants of priests exhilarated by soma, and with the clamour of pupils at school repeating the words of their teacher: —
Resting in silence for a year,
As Brahmans practising a vow,
The frogs have lifted up their voice,
Excited when Parjanya comes.
When one repeats the utterance of the other
Like those who learn the lesson of their teacher,
Then every limb of yours seems to be swelling,
As eloquent ye prate upon the waters.
As Brahmans at the mighty soma offering
Sit round the large and brimming vessel talking,
So throng ye round the pool to hallow
This day of all the year that brings the rain-time.
These Brahmans with their soma raise their voices,
Performing punctually their yearly worship;
And these Adhvaryus, sweating with their kettles,
These priests come forth to view, and none are hidden.
The twelvemonth’s god-sent order they have guarded,
And never do these men neglect the season.
When in the year the rainy time commences,
Those who were heated kettles gain deliverance.
This poem has usually been interpreted as a satire upon the Brahmans. If such be indeed its purport, we find it difficult to conceive how it could have gained admittance into a collection like the Rigveda, which, if not entirely composed, was certainly edited, by priests. The Brahmans cannot have been ignorant of the real significance of the poem. On the other hand, the comparison of frogs with Brahmans would not necessarily imply satire to the Vedic Indian. Students familiar with the style of the Rigveda know that many similes which, if used by ourselves, would involve contempt or ridicule, were employed by the ancient Indian poets only for the sake of graphic effect. As the frogs are in the last stanza besought to grant wealth and length of days, it is much more likely that we have here a panegyric of frogs believed to have the magical power of bringing rain.
