It may be imagined that the worship of elementary beings like those we have men tioned was originally a simple and harmless one. By far the greatest number of the Rig-Veda hymns know of but one sort of offering made to these gods; it consists of the juice of the soma or moon-plant, which, expressed and fermented, was an exhilarating and inebriating beverage, and for this reason, probably, was deemed to invigorate the gods, and to increase their beneficial potency. It was presented to them in ladles, or sprinkled on the sacred Kusa grass. Clarified butter, too, poured on fire, is mentioned in several hymns as an oblation agreeable to the gods; and it may have belonged to this, as we hold, primitive stage of the Vedic worship.
Them is a class of hymns, however, to be found in the Rig-Veda which depait already materially from the simplicity of the conceptions we are referring to In these, which we conceive to be of another order, this instinctive utterance of feeling makes room for the language of speculation; the allegories of poetry yield to the mysticism of the retlectimg mind; and the mysteries of nature becoming more keenly felt, the circle of beings which overawe the, popular mind becomes. enlarged. Thus, the objects by which India, Agni, and the Whet' are propitiated, become gods themselves; soma, especially, the moon-plant and its juice, is invoked as the hestower of all worldly boons. The animal sacrifice, the properties of which seem to be more mysterious than the offerings of soma, or of clarified butter—is added to the original rites. We will quote a few verses from the second book of the Rig-Veda, which may illustrate the essential difference between this order of hymns and those we alluded to before. It is the horse of the sacrifice which is invoked by the worshiper, and its properties are praised in the following strain: " Thy great birth, 0 Horse, is to be glorified; whether first springing from the firma ment or from the water, inasmuch as thou list neighed, for thou hest the wings of the falcon and the limbs of the deer. Trita harnessed the horse which was given by Tama, Indra first mounted him. and Gandharba seized Ids reins. Vasus, you fabricated the horse from the sun. Thou, horse. art Yenta: thou art Aditys, thou art Trita by a mys terious act: thou art associated with Sonia. The sages have said there are three bind ings of thee in heaven," etc.
Mystical language like this doubtless betrays the aberration of the religious instinct of a nation; but it also reveals the fact, that the pious mind of the Hindus was no longer satisfied with the adoration of the elementary or natural powers; it shows that religion endeavored to penetrate into the mysteries of creation. This longing we find, then. expressed in other hymns, which mark the beginning of the philowphical creed qf the Vedic period. The following few verses may tend to illustrate the nature of this third class of hymns, as they occur in the oldest Veda: I have beheld the Lord of Men," one poet sings, "with seven sons [i.e., the seven solar rays], of which delightful and benev olent (deity), who is the object of our invocation, there is an all-pervading middle brother, and a third brother [i.e., Vtlyu and Agni, the younger brothers of Aditva, the sun], well fed with (oblations of) clarified butter. 'They yoke the seven (horses) to the one-wheeled car [i.e., the orb of the sun, or time, or a year]; one horse [i.e., the sun], named seven, bears it along: the three-axled wheel [i.e., the day with its three divisions, or the year with three seasons—hot, wet, and cold; or time—past, present, and future] is undecaying, never loosened, and in it all these regions of the universe abide. . . . Who has seen the primeval (Being) at the time of his being born? What is that endowed with substance which the unsubstantial sustains? From earth are the breath and blood, but where is the soul? Who may repair to the soul to ask this? Immature (in under standing), undiscerning in mind, I inquire of those things which are hidden, (even) front the gods, (what are) the seven threads which the sages !mire spread to envelop the sun in whom all abide?" Another poet sings: " Then there was no entity or non-entity; no world, or sky, or aught above it; nothing anywhere in the happiness of any one, involv ing or involved; nor water deep or dangerous. Death was not, nor was there immor
tality, nor distinction of day or night. But THAT breathed without afliation, single with her (Suvdliti) who is within him. Other than him, nothing existed (which) since (lies) been. . . . Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why this creation took place? The gods are subsequent to the production of this world, then who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this varied world arose, or whether it uphold itself or not? He who in the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe, does indeed know; but not another one can possess this knowledge." As soon as the problem implied by passages like these was raised in the minds of the Hindus, Hinduism must have ceased to be the pure worship of the elementary powers. Henceforward, therefore, we see it either struggling to reconcile the latter tt ith the idea of one supreme being, or to emancipate the inquiry into the principle of erection from the elementary religion recorded in the oldest portion of Vedic poetry. The first of these efforts is principally shown in that portion of the Vedas called Brdheriana (see VEDA), the second in the writings termed Upanishad (see UPANISHAD). In the BrOnianaa—a word of the neuter gender, and not to be confounded with the similar word in the masculine gender, denoting the first Hindu caste—the mystical allegories which now and then appear in what we have called the second class of Vedic hymns, are not only developed to a considerable extent, but gradually brought into a systematic form. Epi thets given by the Rig-Veda poets to the elementary gods are spun out into legends, assuming the shape of historical narratives. The simple and primitive worship men tioned in the hymns becomes highly complex and artificial. A ponderous ritual, founded on those legends, and supported by a far more advanced condition of society, is brought into a regular system, which requires a special class of priests to be kept in a proper working order. Some of the Vedic hymns seem to belong already to the beginning of this period of the Brithmana worship, for in the second book of the Big-Veda several such priests are enumerated in reference to the adoration of Agni, the god of fire; but the full contingent of 16 priests, such as is required for the celebration of a great sacri fice. does not make its appearance before the composition of the Brahmanas and later Vedas. Yet, however wild many of these legends are, however distant they become from the instinctive veneration of the elementary powers of nature, and however much this ritual betrays the gradual development of the institution of castes—unknoNvu to the hymns of the Rig-Veda—there are still two features in them, which mark it progress of the religious mind of ancient India. While the poets of the Rig-Veda are chic-fly concerned itr glorifSing.the vi.Nath manifestations of the oleinenfary gods—in the &fib maims, their ethical qualities are put forward for imitation and praise. Truth and untruth, right and wrong—in the moral sense which these words imply—are not seldom emphasized in the description of the battles fought between gods and demons; and several rites themselves are described as symbolical representations of these and similar qualities of the good and evil beings, worshiped or abhorred. A second feature is the tendency, in these Brahmanas, of determining the rank of the gods, and as a conse quence, of giving prominence to one special god amongst the rest; whereas in the old Vedic poetry, though we may discover a predilection of the poets to bestow more praise, for instance, on India and Agni, than on other gods, yet we find no intention, on their. part, to raise any of them to a supreme rank. Thus, in some Brahmanas, Indra, the' god of the firmament, is endowed with the dignity of a ruler of the gods; in others, the sun receives the attributes of superiority. This is no real solution of the momentous problem hinted at in such Vedic hymns as we quoted before, but it is a semblance of it. There the poet asks "whence this varied world arose"—here the priest auswers that "one god is more elevated than the rest;" and lie is satisfied with regulating the detail of the soma and animal sacrifice, according to the rank which lie assigns to his deities.