Hindu Gods and Heroes | Page 3

prayers and psalms?
They are many, and of various kinds. Most of them are taken from the
religion of the people, and dressed in new garb according to the
imagination of the priest; and a few are priestly inventions altogether.
There is Dyaush-pita, the Sky-father, with Prithivi Mata, the
Earth-mother; there are Vayu the Wind-spirit, Parjanya the Rain-god,
Surya the Sun-god, and other spirits of the sky such as Savita; there is
the Dawn-goddess, Ushas. All these are or were originally deified
powers of nature: the people, though their imagination created them,
have never felt any deep interest in them, and the priests who have
taken them into their charge, though they treat them very courteously
and sing to them elegant hymns full of figures of speech, have not been
able to cover them with the flesh and blood of living personality. Then
we have Agni the Fire-god, and Soma the spirit of the intoxicating juice
of the soma-plant, which is used to inspire the pious to drunken
raptures in certain ceremonies; both of these have acquired a peculiar
importance through their association with priestly worship, especially
Agni, because he, as bearing to the gods the sacrifices cast into his
flames, has become the ideal Priest and divine Paraclete of Heaven.
Nevertheless all this hieratic importance has not made them gods in the
deeper sense, reigning in the hearts of men. Then we find powers of
doubtful origin, Mitra and Varuna and Vishnu and Rudra, and figures
of heroic legend, like the warrior Indra and the twin charioteers called
Asvinaa and Nasatya. All these, with many others, have their worship
in the Rig-veda: the priests sing their praises lustily, and often speak
now of one deity, now of another, as being the highest divinity, without
the least consistency.
Some savage races believe in a highest god or first divine Being in
whom they feel little personal interest. They seldom speak of him, and

hardly ever worship him. So it seems to be with Dyaush-pita. The
priests speak of him and to him, but only in connexion with other gods;
he has not a single whole hymn in his honour, and the only definite
attribute that attaches to him is that of fatherhood. Yet he has become a
great god among other races akin in speech to the Aryans of India:
Dyaush-pita is phonetically the same as the Greek [Greek: Zeus patêr]
and the Latin Iuppiter. How comes it then that he is not, and apparently
never was, a god in the true sense among the Indian Aryans? Because, I
think, his name has always betrayed him. To call a deity "Sky-father" is
to label him as a mere abstraction. No mystery, no possibility of human
personality, can gather round those two plain prose words. So long as a
deity is known by the name of the physical agency that he represents,
so long will he be unable to grow into a personal God in India. The
priests may sing vociferous psalms to Vayu the Wind-spirit and Surya
the Sun-spirit, and even to their beloved Agni the Fire-god; but sing as
much as they will, they never can make the people in general take them
to their hearts.
Observe what a different history is that of Zeus among the
Greeks--Zeus, Father of Gods and Men, the ideal of kingly majesty and
wisdom and goodness. The reason is patent. Ages and ages before the
days when the Homeric poets sang, the Greeks had forgotten that Zeus
originally meant "sky": it had become to them a personal name of a
great spiritual power, which they were free to invest with the noblest
ideal of personality. But very likely there is also another reason: I
believe that the Olympian Zeus, as modelled by Homer and accepted
by following generations, was not the original [Greek: Zeus patêr] at all,
but a usurper who had robbed the old Sky-father of his throne and of
his title as well, that he was at the outset a hero-king who some time
after his death was raised to the seat and dignity of the old Sky-father
and received likewise his name. This theory explains the old hero-sagas
which are connected with Zeus and the strange fact that the Cretans
pointed to a spot in their island where they believed Zeus was buried. It
explains why legends persistently averred that Zeus expelled his father
Kronos from the throne and suppressed the Titan dynasty: on my view,
Kronos was the original Father Zeus, and his name of Zeus and rank as
chief god were appropriated by a deified hero. How natural such a

process was in those days may be seen from the liturgy of Unas on the
pyramids at Sakkarah in Egypt.[2] Here Unas is described as rising in
heaven after his