THE VEDIC PERIOD The Vedic literature comprises (I) the four Vedas, which con sist of hymns, prayers and spells addressed to the gods; (2) the Brahmanas or ritual treatises; (3) the Araoyakas, or the forest treatises, which constitute the concluding portions of the Brah manas; and (4) the Upanishads, which form the basis of much of the later Indian philosophy. The religion of Nature of the hymns, the religion of law of the Brahmanas and the religion of spirit of the Upanishads correspond in a very close way to the three great divisions in the Hegelian conception of the growth of religion.
The Rg Veda represents the thought of suc cessive generations of thinkers, and so contains within it different strata of thought. We see in it the development of religious ideas from the animistic to the absolutistic stages. "Where is the sun by night?" "Where go the stars by day?" "Why does the sun not fall down?" "Of the two, night and day, which is the earlier, which the later?" "Whence comes the wind, and whither goes it?" These are some of the questions which harassed the mind of the early Aryan. His first efforts to answer them resulted in natural istic polytheism. There is a deity which makes the strong wind to blow, the lightning to flash and the thunder to roll. While some of the chief Vedic deities like Indra and Varuna are completely emancipated from connection with the phenomena of Nature which originally suggested them, others like Surya (Sun) and Agni (Fire) are conceived on the lines of the actual phenomena whose names they bear. In some later hymns we have abstract deities which show no traces of connection with natural phenomena, as Prajapati ("lord of creatures"), or personifications of pure ab stractions, as S'raddha (Faith), Manyu (Wrath). The conception of Varuna, the lord of physical and moral order, reaches a high level and is majestic enough both in its cosmical and ethical aspects. Varuna is the lord of rta: rta refers to the physical order in the universe, the order of the sacrifice and the moral law of the world. On account of rta, the sun pursues his daily, and the moon her nightly, journey across the sky and the silent procession of the seasons moves regularly in light and shadow, in cloud and sunshine across the earth. The doctrine of karma is a reformula tion of this principle of rta.
When mythical conceptions from beyond the limits of the Aryan world belonging to a different order of thought entered into the Vedic pantheon sceptical tendencies developed. There were men who were harassed by the doubts "who is Indra? whoever saw him?" "To what god shall we offer our oblation?" (X. 121.) Some men were devoid of faith. An undercurrent of satire may be noticed in some of the hymns (RV IX.
X. 119; VII. 103).
The crowding of gods and goddesses proved a weariness to the intellect. Attempts were made to identify one god with another or throw all the gods together. The close connection of the elements in Nature helped the growth of syncretism. An orderly system of Nature signified by the con ception of rta has no room for miraculous interferences in which alone superstition and confused thought find the signs of polythe ism. Besides, religious consciousness is naturally inclined to be lieve that the supreme is one. What is called henotheism or the worshipping of each divinity in turn as if it were the greatest and even the only god is the expression of the logic of religion. When the same functions of establishing the earth and sustaining the air and the sky are assigned to the different deities we tend to drop the peculiarities and make a god of the common func tions. This becomes easy when the several gods are not clear-cut individuals but cloudy and confused concepts. The supreme is identified with Prajapati (X.
43, 184. 4,
4), sometimes with Hiranyagarbha (X. 121), sometimes with Brhaspati (X. 72).
Those dissatisfied with monotheism argue that there is one impersonal reality of which Agni, Indra, Varuna are the names or forms. "The real is one, the learned call it by various names." This one is the soul of the world, the reason immanent in the universe (X. 129. 2). "Priests and poets with words make into many the hidden reality which is but one." (X. 114.) Our minds seem to be satisfied with inadequate images of this reality, "the idols which we here adore." Cosmology.—At the pluralistic stage the deities are looked upon as the authors of the universe who create it by a process of manufacture or organic development or through the power of the sacrifice (X. 123. I). When we rise to the monotheistic level the one god creates the world with the help of pre-existent matter (X. 121). Sometimes the dualism of the creator and the pre existent matter is overcome and God is said to create the world out of his own nature. In the Purusasukta (X. 90) the world is produced by the gods from the sacrifice of a primeval purusa (person). This person is all that has been, is, and shall be. But the most advanced theory of creation is suggested in the Nasadiya hymn (X. 129). It starts with the assertion that in the beginning there was neither being nor non-being, neither air nor sky, neither death nor immortality, neither night nor day. There was nothing else save the one which breathed breathless, of its own power. This is the poet's way of describing the primal unconditional ground of all being, which is beyond our categories. The third verse states that through the power of tapas (austerity), the first antithesis of being and non-being, the active energy and the passive matter is produced. Through desire (kama), which is the germ of mind (manasoretah), the rest of the development takes place. Desire, which is the sign of self-consciousness, is the bond binding the existent and the non-existent. We cannot say why the original being develops into an active creator and the passive chaos. The hymn concludes with an expression of doubt. Crea tion is a mystery. Ko veda? ("who knows?") Future Life.—A healthy joy in life dominates the Rg Veda. The worshipper asks not for immortality or heaven but a long life for a full i oo years. There is belief in future life, a heaven for the good and a hell for the wicked. Reward follows righteousness and punishment misconduct.
