BOOK. II.
parables, would have conveyed a familiar meaning to the Aryans of northern India.[1] It matters little then whether Varuna be in these hymns mentioned almost invariably in conjunction with Mitra and sometimes with other gods. Like these, he is Âditya, Kronion, if Aditi be time; but the mythical notion thus introduced sate so loosely on those who held it, that their language ceased to show any sign of its influence in times of real anguish and sorrow.[2] It was enough that they could realise at once the righteousness of God, and His readiness to forgive those who disobeyed His laws so soon as they repented them of their sin.[3]
Aditi and the Âdityas. The process which converted the physical Varuṇa into a spiritual God is carried to its extreme results in the conception of Aditi, "the unbound, the unbounded," or even, as being expressed by the negation of diti, a bond, "the Absolute." This indefinite term was naturally used to denote the source from which all life, even the life of the gods, springs; and thus Aditi, the Infinite, became the mother
- ↑ These words were written before the appearance of Professor Max Müller's article on Semitic Monotheism in his volumes of collected essays. Few probably will read that paper without feeling that on the main question very little room is left for doubt. Polytheism is to be found in both the Semitic and the Aryan races, but it was more ingrained in the former. The very interchangeableness of the attributes of the Vedic gods was, to a certain extent, a safeguard against any conscisus and systematic polytheism. So long as this state of thought continued, Dyaus, Varuna, Indra, Vishnu, would be but many names for one and the same Being; but of course "every new name threatened," to use Professor Müller's words, " to obscure more and more the primitive intuition of God."—Chips, ii. 358. With the Jews the names under which they worshipped a multitude of gods were manifestly mere appellatives which never underwent any phonetic corruption, and thus the tendency to polytheism became the more inveterate. It is, however, scarcely necessary to say more than that "if there had been in the Semitic race a truly monotheistic instinct, the history of those nations would become perfectly unintelligible."—Ibid. 365. See further, the Hibbert Lectures, 1878, Lecture vi.
- ↑ "Every god is conceived as supreme, or at least as inferior to no other god, at the time that he is praised or invoked Vy the Vedic poets ; and the feeling that the various deities are but different names, different conceptions of that incomprehensible Being which no thought can reach and no language express, is not yet quite extinct in the minds of some of the more thoughtful Rishis."—Max Müller, Lectures on Language, second series, 412. It might be added that the interpretations of later theologians cannot be accounted for except by the fact that this conviction never became totally extinct. Even when the whole Hindu Pantheon has attained its final dimensions, the myths are so treated as to leave little doubt of the real meaning in the writer's mind. The outward respect paid to the popular legends thinly disguises that monotheistic (or henotheistic) conviction, which accounts for much that would otherwise be perplexing in the writings of Roman Catholic and other theologians.
- ↑ The distinction between the old Vedic theory of sin and the forms of belief still prevalent on the subject cannot always be very broadly drawn."I ask, O Varuna, wishing to know this my sin. I go to ask the wise. The Sages all tell me the same. Varuna it is who is angry with me. "Was it an old sin, O Varuna, that thou wishest to destroy thy friend, who always praises thee? Tell me, thou unconquerable lord, and I will quickly turn to thee with praise freed from sin. "Absolve us from the sins of our fathers and from those which we committed with our own bodies."
