A History of Indian Philosophy Volume 1

by Surendranath Dasgupta | 1922 | 212,082 words | ISBN-13: 9788120804081

This page describes the philosophy of the vedic gods: a concept having historical value dating from ancient India. This is the eighth part in the series called the “the vedas, brahmanas and their philosophy”, originally composed by Surendranath Dasgupta in the early 20th century.

The hymns of the Ṛg-Veda were almost all composed in praise of the gods. The social and other materials are of secondary importance, as these references had only to be mentioned incidentally in giving vent to their feelings of devotion to the god. The gods here are however personalities presiding over the diverse powers of nature or forming their very essence. They have therefore no definite, systematic and separate characters like the Greek gods or the gods of the later Indian mythical works, the Purāṇas. The powers of nature such as the storm, the rain, the thunder, are closely associated with one another, and the gods associated with them are also similar in character. The same epithets are attributed to different gods and it is only in a few specific qualities that they differ from one another. In the later mythological compositions of the Purāṇas the gods lost their character as hypostatic powers of nature, and thus became actual personalities and characters having their tales of joy and sorrow like the mortal here below. The Vedic gods may be contrasted with them in this, that they are of an impersonal nature, as the characters they display are mostly but expressions of the powers of nature.

To take an example, the fire or Agni is described, as Kaegi has it, as one that

“lies concealed in the softer wood, as in a chamber, until, called forth by the rubbing in the early morning hour, he suddenly springs forth in gleaming brightness.

The sacrificer takes and lays him on the wood. When the priests pour melted butter upon him, he leaps up crackling and neighing like a horse—he whom men love to see increasing like their own prosperity.

They wonder at him, when, decking himself with changing colors like a suitor, equally beautiful on all sides, he presents to all sides his front.

“All-searching is his beam, the gleaming of his light,
His, the all-beautiful, of beauteous face and glance,
The changing shimmer like that floats upon the stream,
So Agni’s rays gleam over bright and never cease.[1]

R. V. I. 143. 3.

They would describe the wind (Vāta) and adore him and say

“In what place was he born, and from whence comes he?
The vital breath of gods, the world’s great offspring,
The God where’er he will moves at his pleasure:
His rushing sound we hear—what his appearance, no one.[2]

R. V. x. 168. 3, 4.

It was the forces of nature and her manifestations, on earth here, the atmosphere around and above us, or in the Heaven beyond the vault of the sky that excited the devotion and imagination of the Vedic poets. Thus with the exception of a few abstract gods of whom we shall presently speak and some dual divinities, the gods may be roughly classified as the terrestrial, atmospheric, and celestial.

Polytheism, Henotheism and Monotheism.

The plurality of the Vedic gods may lead a superficial enquirer to think the faith of the Vedic people polytheistic. But an intelligent reader will find here neither polytheism nor monotheism but a simple primitive stage of belief to which both of these may be said to owe their origin. The gods here do not preserve their proper places as in a polytheistic faith, but each one of them shrinks into insignificance or shines as supreme according as it is the object of adoration or not. The Vedic poets were the children of nature. Every natural phenomenon excited their wonder, admiration or veneration.

The poet is struck with wonder that

“the rough red cow gives soft white milk.”

The appearance or the setting of the sun sends a thrill into the minds of the Vedic sage and with wonder-gazing eyes he exclaims:

“Undropped beneath, not fastened firm, how comes it
That downward turned he falls not downward ?
The guide of his ascending path,—who saw it[1] ?”

R. V. iv. 13. 5.

The sages wonder how “the sparkling waters of all rivers flow into one ocean without ever filling it.” The minds of the Vedic people as we find in the hymns were highly impressionable and fresh. At this stage the time was not ripe enough for them to accord a consistent and well-defined existence to the multitude of gods nor to universalize them in a monotheistic creed. They hypostatized unconsciously any force of nature that overawed them or filled them with gratefulness and joy by its beneficent or aesthetic character, and adored it. The deity which moved the devotion or admiration of their mind was the most supreme for the time.

This peculiar trait of the Vedic hymns Max Muller has called Henotheism or Kathenotheism:

“abelief in single gods, each in turn standing out as the highest. And since the gods are thought of as specially ruling in their own spheres, the singers, in their special concerns and desires, call most of all on that god to whom they ascribe the most power in the matter,—to whose department if I may say so, their wish belongs.

This god alone is present to the mind of the suppliant; with him for the time being is associated everything that can be said of a divine being;—he is the highest, the only god, before whom all others disappear, there being in this, however, no offence or depreciation of any other god[3].”

“Against this theory it has been urged,” as Macdonell rightly says in his Vedic Mythology[4],

“that Vedic deities are not represented ‘as independent of all the rest,’ since no religion brings its gods into more frequent and varied juxtaposition and combination, and that even the mightiest gods of the Veda are made dependent on others. Thus Varuṇa and Sūrya are subordinate to Indra (i. 101), Varuna and the Aśvins submit to the power of Viṣṇu (i. 156).....

Even when a god is spoken of as unique or chief (eka), as is natural enough in laudations, such statements lose their temporarily monotheistic force, through the modifications or corrections supplied by the context or even by the same verse[5].”

“Henotheism is therefore an appearance,” says Macdonell,

“rather than a reality, an appearance produced by the indefiniteness due to undeveloped anthropomorphism, by the lack of any Vedic god occupying the position of a Zeus as the constant head of the pantheon, by the natural tendency of the priest or singer in extolling a particular god to exaggerate his greatness and to ignore other gods, and by the growing belief in the unity of the gods (cf. the refrain of 3, 35) each of whom might be regarded as a type of the divine[6].”

But whether we call it Henotheism or the mere temporary exaggeration of the powers of the deity in question, it is evident that this stage can neither be properly called polytheistic nor monotheistic, but one which had a tendency towards them both, although it was not sufficiently developed to be identified with either of them. The tendency towards extreme exaggeration could be called a monotheistic bias in germ, whereas the correlation of different deities as independent of one another and yet existing side by side was a tendency towards polytheism.

Growth of a Monotheistic tendency; Prajāpati, Viśvakarma.

This tendency towards extolling a god as the greatest and highest gradually brought forth the conception of a supreme Lord of all beings (Prajāpati), not by a process of conscious generalization but as a necessary stage of development of the mind, able to imagine a deity as the repository of the highest moral and physical power, though its direct manifestation cannot be perceived. Thus the epithet Prajāpati or the Lord of beings, which was originally an epithet for other deities, came to be recognized as a separate deity, the highest and the greatest.

Thus it is said in R. V. x. 121[7]:

In the beginning rose Hiranyagarbha,
Born as the only lord of all existence.
This earth he settled firm and heaven established:
What god shall we adore with our oblations ?
Who gives us breath, who gives us strength, whose bidding
All creatures must obey, the bright gods even;
Whose shade is death, whose shadow life immortal:
What god shall we adore with our oblations ?
Who by his might alone became the monarch
Of all that breathes, of all that wakes or slumbers,
Of all, both man and beast, the lord eternal:
What god shall we adore with our oblations ?
Whose might and majesty these snowy mountains,
The ocean and the distant stream exhibit;
Whose arms extended are these spreading regions:
What god shall we adore with our oblations ?
Who made the heavens bright, the earth enduring,
Who fixed the firmament, the heaven of heavens;
Who measured out the air’s extended spaces:
What god shall we adore with our oblations ?

Similar attributes are also ascribed to the deity Viśvakarma (All-creator)[8]. He is said to be father and procreator of all beings, though himself uncreated. He generated the primitive waters.

It is to him that the sage says,

Who is our father, our creator, maker,
Who every place doth know and every creature,
By whom alone to gods their names were given,
To him all other creatures go to ask him[9].

R. V. x. 82. 3.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 35.
 

[2]:

Ibid. p. 38.

[3]:

The Rigveda , by Kaegi, p. 27.

[4]:

See Ibid. p. 33. See also Arrowsmith’s note on it for other references to Henotheism.

[5]:

Macdonell’s Vedic Mythology, pp. 16, 17.

[6]:

Macdonell’s Vedic Mythology, p. 17.

[7]:

The Rigveda, by Kaegi, pp. 88, 89.

[8]:

See The Rigveda, by Kaegi, p. 89, and also Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, vol. iv. pp. 5-11.

[9]:

Kaegi’s translation.

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