DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.635#0016
EARLY WORSHIP 3
Dyaus-pitar, as Heavenly Father, and Prithivi, the
earth, as Mother; Varuna, the all-embracing firma-
ment, the upholder of heaven and earth, king of
gods and men, who made the sun and moon to shine,
whose breath was the wind—
" He knows the path of birds that fly through heaven, and sovran
of the sea,
He knows the ships that are thereon.
True to his holy law, he knows the twelve moons with their
progeny,1
He knows the moon of later birth.
He knows the pathway of the wind, the spreading-high and mighty
wind.
He knows the gods above."
—Rig- Veda, Hymn 25. Griffith's translation.
They invoked Indra, the rain-god, as brother, friend,
and father, who heard their prayers; Agni, the Fire-
god, slayer of demons, who protected them day and
night from evil; Surya, "the soul of all that moveth
not, or moveth", and Savitri—the sun and sunshine.
The early Vedic hymns are redolent with the fragrance
of a bright and genial spring-time, reflecting the joy
of a simple, pastoral life in the golden age, when the
children of men played with Mother Nature in her
kindest moods, and the earth and the stars sang to-
gether. The gloom and terrors of tropical forests, the
fury of the cyclone, the scorching heat, and the mighty
forces of the monsoon floods, had not yet infected
Aryan life and thought. Their poets loved to sing
the beauties of the dawn—Ushas, the lovely maiden,
daughter of the sky; but her dark sister, Night, was
also to them a kindly divinity:—
1 The days.
(n 488) C
Dyaus-pitar, as Heavenly Father, and Prithivi, the
earth, as Mother; Varuna, the all-embracing firma-
ment, the upholder of heaven and earth, king of
gods and men, who made the sun and moon to shine,
whose breath was the wind—
" He knows the path of birds that fly through heaven, and sovran
of the sea,
He knows the ships that are thereon.
True to his holy law, he knows the twelve moons with their
progeny,1
He knows the moon of later birth.
He knows the pathway of the wind, the spreading-high and mighty
wind.
He knows the gods above."
—Rig- Veda, Hymn 25. Griffith's translation.
They invoked Indra, the rain-god, as brother, friend,
and father, who heard their prayers; Agni, the Fire-
god, slayer of demons, who protected them day and
night from evil; Surya, "the soul of all that moveth
not, or moveth", and Savitri—the sun and sunshine.
The early Vedic hymns are redolent with the fragrance
of a bright and genial spring-time, reflecting the joy
of a simple, pastoral life in the golden age, when the
children of men played with Mother Nature in her
kindest moods, and the earth and the stars sang to-
gether. The gloom and terrors of tropical forests, the
fury of the cyclone, the scorching heat, and the mighty
forces of the monsoon floods, had not yet infected
Aryan life and thought. Their poets loved to sing
the beauties of the dawn—Ushas, the lovely maiden,
daughter of the sky; but her dark sister, Night, was
also to them a kindly divinity:—
1 The days.
(n 488) C