DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9541#0059
INTRODUCTION.
37
work. The worship they foreshadow is of a class too purely intel-
lectual to require the assistance of the stonemason and the carver to
give it expression. The worship of the Aryans was addressed to the
sun and moon. The firmament and all its hosts; the rain-hearing
cloud; the sun-ushering dawn; all that was beautiful in the heavens
above or beneficent on earth, was sung by them in hymns of elevated
praise, and addressed in terms of awe or endearment as fear or hope
prevailed in the bosom of the worshipper.1 Had this gone on for
some time longer than it did, the objects worshipped by the Aryans
in India might have become gods, like those of Greece and Rome,
endowed with all the feelings and all the failings of humanity. In
India it was otherwise; the deities were dethroned, but never were
degraded. There is no trace in Vedic times, so far as at present
known, of Indra or Varuna, of Agni or Ushas, being represented in
wood or stone, or of their requiring houses or temples to shelter them.
It is true indeed that the terms of endearment in which they are
addressed are frequently such as mortals use in speaking of each other ;
but how otherwise can man express his feeling of love or fear, or
address his supplication to the being whose assistance he implores ?
The great beauty of the Veda is, that it stops short before the
powers of nature are dwarfed into human forms, and when every man
stood independently by himself and sought through the intervention
of all that was great or glorious on the earth, or in the skies, to
approach the great spirit that is beyond and above all created things.
Had the Aryans ever been a numerical majority in India, and
consequently able to preserve their blood and caste in tolerable purity,
the religion of India never could have sunk so low as it did, though
it might have fallen below the standard of the Veda. What really
destroyed it was, that each succeeding immigration of less pure Aryan
or Turanian races rendered their numerical majority relatively less
and less, while their inevitable influence so educated the subject races
as to render their moral majority even less important. These pro-
cesses went on steadily and uninterruptedly till, in the lime of
Buddha, the native religions rose fairly to an equality with that of
the Aryans, and afterwards for a while eclipsed it. The Vedas were
only ultimately saved from absolute annihilation in India, by being
embedded in the Vaishnava and Saiva superstitions, where their
inanimate forms may still be recognised, but painfully degraded from
their primitive elevation.
When we turn from the Vedas, and try to investigate the origin
of those religions that first opposed and finally absorbed the Vedas in
their abominations, we find our means of information painfully scanty
1 " The ritual of the Veda is chiefly, if { ticularly to fire."—H. H. Wilson, 'Asiatic
not wholly, addressed to the elements, par- Researches,' xvii. ji. 194 : ibid., \i. 614.
37
work. The worship they foreshadow is of a class too purely intel-
lectual to require the assistance of the stonemason and the carver to
give it expression. The worship of the Aryans was addressed to the
sun and moon. The firmament and all its hosts; the rain-hearing
cloud; the sun-ushering dawn; all that was beautiful in the heavens
above or beneficent on earth, was sung by them in hymns of elevated
praise, and addressed in terms of awe or endearment as fear or hope
prevailed in the bosom of the worshipper.1 Had this gone on for
some time longer than it did, the objects worshipped by the Aryans
in India might have become gods, like those of Greece and Rome,
endowed with all the feelings and all the failings of humanity. In
India it was otherwise; the deities were dethroned, but never were
degraded. There is no trace in Vedic times, so far as at present
known, of Indra or Varuna, of Agni or Ushas, being represented in
wood or stone, or of their requiring houses or temples to shelter them.
It is true indeed that the terms of endearment in which they are
addressed are frequently such as mortals use in speaking of each other ;
but how otherwise can man express his feeling of love or fear, or
address his supplication to the being whose assistance he implores ?
The great beauty of the Veda is, that it stops short before the
powers of nature are dwarfed into human forms, and when every man
stood independently by himself and sought through the intervention
of all that was great or glorious on the earth, or in the skies, to
approach the great spirit that is beyond and above all created things.
Had the Aryans ever been a numerical majority in India, and
consequently able to preserve their blood and caste in tolerable purity,
the religion of India never could have sunk so low as it did, though
it might have fallen below the standard of the Veda. What really
destroyed it was, that each succeeding immigration of less pure Aryan
or Turanian races rendered their numerical majority relatively less
and less, while their inevitable influence so educated the subject races
as to render their moral majority even less important. These pro-
cesses went on steadily and uninterruptedly till, in the lime of
Buddha, the native religions rose fairly to an equality with that of
the Aryans, and afterwards for a while eclipsed it. The Vedas were
only ultimately saved from absolute annihilation in India, by being
embedded in the Vaishnava and Saiva superstitions, where their
inanimate forms may still be recognised, but painfully degraded from
their primitive elevation.
When we turn from the Vedas, and try to investigate the origin
of those religions that first opposed and finally absorbed the Vedas in
their abominations, we find our means of information painfully scanty
1 " The ritual of the Veda is chiefly, if { ticularly to fire."—H. H. Wilson, 'Asiatic
not wholly, addressed to the elements, par- Researches,' xvii. ji. 194 : ibid., \i. 614.