spouse of the sky, divine honours both in India and Europe.[1] Each deity addressed received all the homage and adoration that poetic fancy could lavish or imagine. His worshippers endeavoured to make him feel that he was the great god who ruled the world and controlled man and nature; and they hoped that by judicious flattery and plenteous sacrifice he would listen to and grant their passionate supplications.
The gods as well as their votaries appear to have lived in friendly contiguity both in India and in Greece. Jupiter had his temple near that of Venus as they are found to-day in the disentombed city of Pompeii. Near Delphi Apollo had exclusive sway even to the extent of relegating Jupiter into a subordinate position. Each province selected in the wide domain of Olympus some deity which it worshipped to the exclusion of all others. In India, though the worship of Shiv, which is associated with knowledge, is different from that of Vishnu, which is associated with devotion, and though the worshippers of both gods frequently quarrelled and addressed each other in injurious language, yet they were united by the common bond of Hinduism, and sometimes celebrated their worship in harmony.[2]
When man extended his horizon, the sufficiency and omnipotence of the gods ordinarily invoked began to be canvassed. In Greece the minor deities became completely subordinated to Zeus, the great ruler of Olympus. They could do everything but regulate human fate and action. That was reserved for the supreme deity alone :—
Ἅπαντ᾽ ἐπαχθῆ πλὴν θεοῖσι κοιρανεῖν.
ἐλεύθερος γὰρ οὔτις ἐστὶ πλὴν Διός.[3]
In India a belief in an infinite, illimitable, and supreme power was gradually evolved by seers and philosophers
- ↑ Tacitus wrote of the ancient Germans—'Herthum, id est terram matrem, colunt eamque intervenire rebus hominum, invehi populis arbitrantur,' Germania, cap. xl.
- ↑ An idol in a temple, Harihareshwar, on the outskirts of the Maisūr (Mysore) State contains the conjoint emblems of Vishnu and Shiv.
- ↑ Aesch. Prom. Vinc. 49.
