India: What can it teach us? Part 14

"Inserting his head between the old man's legs, he exerted all his prodigious strength, and hurled poor Ru, sky and all, to a tremendous height--so high, indeed, that the blue sky could never get back again. Unluckily, however, for the sky-supporting Ru, his head and shoulders got entangled among the stars. He struggled hard, but fruitlessly, to extricate himself. Maui walked off well pleased with having raised the sky to its present height, but left half his father's body and both his legs ingloriously suspended between heaven and earth. Thus perished Ru. His body rotted away, and his bones came tumbling down from time to time, and were shivered on the earth into countless fragments. These shivered bones of Ru are scattered over every hill and valley of Mangaia, to the very edge of the sea."

What the natives call "the bones of Ru" (t e i v i o R u) are pieces of pumice-stone.

Now let us consider, first of all, whether this story, which with slight variations is told all over the Polynesian islands,[164] is pure nonsense, or whether there was originally some sense in it. My conviction is that nonsense is everywhere the child of sense, only that unfortunately many children, like that youngster Maui, consider themselves much wiser than their fathers, and occasionally succeed in hurling them out of existence.

It is a peculiarity of many of the ancient myths that they represent events which happen every day, or every year, as having happened once upon a time.[165] The daily battle between day and night, the yearly battle between winter and spring, are represented almost like historical events, and some of the episodes and touches belonging originally to these constant battles of nature, have certainly been transferred into and mixed up with battles that took place at a certain time, such as, for instance, the siege of Troy. When historical recollections failed, legendary accounts of the ancient battles between Night and Morning, Winter and Spring, were always at hand; and, as in modern times we constantly hear "good stories," which we have known from our childhood, told again and again of any man whom they seem to fit, in the same manner, in ancient times, any act of prowess, or daring, or mischief, originally told of the sun, "the orient Conqueror of gloomy Night," was readily transferred to and believed of any local hero who might seem to be a second Jupiter, or Mars, or Hercules.

I have little doubt therefore that as the accounts of a deluge, for instance, which we find almost everywhere, are originally recollections of the annual torrents of rain or snow that covered the little worlds within the ken of the ancient village-bards,[166] this tearing asunder of heaven and earth too was originally no more than a description of what might be seen every morning. During a dark night the sky seemed to cover the earth; the two seemed to be one, and could not be distinguished one from the other.[167] Then came the Dawn, which with its bright rays lifted the covering of the dark night to a certain point, till at last Maui appeared, small in stature, a mere child, that is, the sun of the morning--thrown up suddenly, as it were, when his first rays shot through the sky from beneath the horizon, then falling back to the earth, like a bird, and rising in gigantic form on the morning sky. The dawn now was hurled away, and the sky was seen lifted high above the earth; and Maui, the sun, marched on well pleased with having raised the sky to its present height.

Why pumice-stone should be called the bones of Ru, we cannot tell, without knowing a great deal more of the language of Mangaia than we do at present. It is most likely an independent saying, and was afterward united with the story of Ru and Maui.

Now I must quote at least a few extracts from a Maori legend as written down by Judge Manning:[168]

"This is the Genesis of the New Zealanders:

"The Heavens which are above us, and the Earth which lies beneath us, are the progenitors of men, and the origin of all things.

"Formerly the Heaven lay upon the Earth, and all was darkness....

"And the children of Heaven and Earth sought to discover the difference between light and darkness, between day and night....

"So the sons of Rangi (Heaven) and of Papa (Earth) consulted together, and said, 'Let us seek means whereby to destroy Heaven and Earth, or to separate them from each other.'

"Then said Tumatauenga (the G.o.d of War), 'Let us destroy them both.'

"Then said Tane-Mahuta (the Forest G.o.d), 'Not so; let them be separated. Let one of them go upward and become a stranger to us; let the other remain below and be a parent for us.'

"Then four of the G.o.ds tried to separate Heaven and Earth, but did not succeed, while the fifth, Tane, succeeded.

"After Heaven and Earth had been separated, great storms arose, or, as the poet expresses it, one of their sons, Tawhiri-Matea, the G.o.d of the winds, tried to revenge the outrage committed on his parents by his brothers. Then follow dismal dusky days, and dripping chilly skies, and arid scorching blasts. All the G.o.ds fight, till at last Tu only remains, the G.o.d of war, who had devoured all his brothers, except the Storm. More fights follow, in which the greater part of the earth was overwhelmed by the waters, and but a small portion remained dry. After that, light continued to increase, and as the light increased, so also the people who had been hidden between Heaven and Earth increased.... And so generation was added to generation down to the time of Maui-Potiki, he who brought death into the world.

"Now in these latter days Heaven remains far removed from his wife, the Earth; but the love of the wife rises upward in sighs toward her husband. These are the mists which fly upward from the mountain-tops; and the tears of Heaven fall downward on his wife; behold the dew-drops!"

So far the Maori Genesis.

Let us now return to the Veda, and compare these crude and somewhat grotesque legends with the language of the ancient Aryan poets. In the hymns of the Rig-Veda the separating and keeping apart of Heaven and Earth is several times alluded to, and here too it is represented as the work of the most valiant G.o.ds. In I. 67, 3 it is Agni, fire, who holds the earth and supports the heaven; in X. 89, 4 it is Indra who keeps them apart; in IX. 101, 15 Soma is celebrated for the same deed, and in III. 31, 12 other G.o.ds too share the same honor.[169]

In the Aitareya Brahma_n_a we read:[170] "These two worlds (Heaven and Earth) were once joined together. They went asunder. Then it did not rain, nor did the sun shine. And the five tribes did not agree with one another. The G.o.ds then brought the two (Heaven and Earth) together, and when they came together they formed a wedding of the G.o.ds."

Here we have in a shorter form the same fundamental ideas: first, that formerly Heaven and Earth were together; that afterward they were separated; that when they were thus separated there was war throughout nature, and neither rain nor sunshine; that, lastly, Heaven and Earth were conciliated, and that then a great wedding took place.

Now I need hardly remind those who are acquainted with Greek and Roman literature, how familiar these and similar conceptions about a marriage between Heaven and earth were in Greece and Italy. They seem to possess there a more special reference to the annual reconciliation between Heaven and Earth, which takes place in spring, and to their former estrangement during winter. But the first cosmological separation of the two always points to the want of light and the impossibility of distinction during the night, and the gradual lifting up of the blue sky through the rising of the sun.[171]

In the Homeric hymns[172] the Earth is addressed as

"Mother of G.o.ds, the wife of the starry Heaven;"[173]

and the Heaven or aether is often called the father. Their marriage too is described, as, for instance, by Euripides, when he says:

"There is the mighty Earth, Jove's aether: He (the aether) is the creator of men and G.o.ds; The earth receiving the moist drops of rain, Bears mortals, Bears food, and the tribes of animals.

Hence she is not unjustly regarded As the mother of all."[174]

And what is more curious still is that we have evidence that Euripides received this doctrine from his teacher, the philosopher Anaxagoras. For Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus[175] tells us that Euripides frequented the lectures of Anaxagoras. Now, it was the theory of that philosopher that originally all things were in all things, but that afterward they became separated. Euripides later in life a.s.sociated with Sokrates, and became doubtful regarding that theory. He accordingly propounds the ancient doctrine by the mouth of another, namely Melanippe, who says:

"This saying (myth) is not mine, but came from my mother, that formerly Heaven and Earth were one shape; but when they were separated from each other, they gave birth and brought all things into the light, trees, birds, beasts, and the fishes whom the sea feeds, and the race of mortals."

Thus we have met with the same idea of the original union, of a separation, and of a subsequent reunion of Heaven and Earth in Greece, in India, and in the Polynesian islands.

Let us now see how the poets of the Veda address these two beings, Heaven and Earth.

They are mostly addressed in the dual, as two beings forming but one concept. We meet, however, with verses which are addressed to the Earth by herself, and which speak of her as "kind, without thorns, and pleasant to dwell on,"[176] while there are clear traces in some of the hymns that at one time Dyaus, the sky, was the supreme deity.[177] When invoked together they are called D y a v a - p_ r i_ t h i v y a u, from d y u, the sky, and p _r i_ t h i v i, the broad earth.

If we examine their epithets, we find that many of them reflect simply the physical aspects of Heaven and Earth. Thus they are called u r u, wide; u r u v y a _k_ a s, widely expanded, d u r e - a n t e, with limits far apart, g a b h i r a, deep; g h _r i_ t a v a t, giving fat; m a d h u d u g h a, yielding honey or dew; p a y a s v a t, full of milk; b h u r i - r e t a s, rich in seed.

Another cla.s.s of epithets represents them already as endowed with certain human and superhuman qualities, such as a s a _s k_ a t, never tiring, a _g_ a r a, not decaying, which brings us very near to immortal; a d r u h, not injuring, or not deceiving, p r a _k_ e t a s, provident, and then pita-mata, father and mother, devaputra, having the G.o.ds for their sons, _r i_ t a - v_ r i_ d h and _r i_ t a v a t, protectors of the _Ri_ta, of what is right, guardians of eternal laws.

Here you see what is so interesting in the Veda, the gradual advance from the material to the spiritual, from the sensuous to the supersensuous, from the human to the superhuman and the divine. Heaven and Earth were seen, and, according to our notions, they might simply be cla.s.sed as visible and finite beings. But the ancient poets were more honest to themselves. They could see Heaven and Earth, but they never saw them in their entirety. They felt that there was something beyond the purely finite aspect of these beings, and therefore they thought of them, not as they would think of a stone, or a tree, or a dog, but as something not-finite, not altogether visible or knowable, yet as something important to themselves, powerful, strong to bless, but also strong to hurt. Whatever was between Heaven and Earth seemed to be theirs, their property, their realm, their dominion. They held and embraced all; they seemed to have produced all. The Devas or bright beings, the sun, the dawn, the fire, the wind, the rain, were all theirs, and were called therefore the offspring of Heaven and Earth. Thus Heaven and Earth became the Universal Father and Mother.

Then we ask at once: "Were then these Heaven and Earth G.o.ds?" But G.o.ds in what sense? In our sense of G.o.d? Why, in our sense, G.o.d is altogether incapable of a plural. Then in the Greek sense of the word?

No, certainly not; for what the Greeks called G.o.ds was the result of an intellectual growth totally independent of the Veda or of India. We must never forget that what we call G.o.ds in ancient mythologies are not substantial, living, individual beings, of whom we can predicate this or that. D e v a, which we translate by G.o.d, is nothing but an adjective, expressive of a quality shared by heaven and earth, by the sun and the stars and the dawn and the sea, namely _brightness_; and the idea of G.o.d, at that early time, contains neither more nor less than what is shared in common by all these bright beings. That is to say, the idea of G.o.d is not an idea ready-made, which could be applied in its abstract purity to heaven and earth and other such like beings; but it is an idea, growing out of the concepts of heaven and earth and of the other bright beings, slowly separating itself from them, but never containing more than what was contained, though confusedly, in the objects to which it was successively applied.

Nor must it be supposed that heaven and earth, having once been raised to the rank of undecaying or immortal beings, of divine parents, of guardians of the laws, were thus permanently settled in the religious consciousness of the people. Far from it. When the ideas of other G.o.ds, and of more active and more distinctly personal G.o.ds had been elaborated, the Vedic _Ri_shis asked without hesitation: Who then has made heaven and earth? not exactly Heaven and Earth, as conceived before, but heaven and earth as seen every day, as a part of what began to be called Nature or the Universe.

Thus one poet says:[178]

"He was indeed among the G.o.ds the cleverest workman who produced the two brilliant ones (heaven and earth), that gladden all things; he who measured out the two bright ones (heaven and earth) by his wisdom, and established them on everlasting supports."

And again:[179] "He was a good workman who produced heaven and earth; the wise, who by his might brought together these two (heaven and earth), the wide, the deep, the well-fashioned in the bottomless s.p.a.ce."

Very soon this great work of making heaven and earth was ascribed, like other mighty works, to the mightiest of their G.o.ds, to Indra. At first we read that Indra, originally only a kind of _Jupiter pluvius_, or G.o.d of rain, stretched out heaven and earth, like a hide;[180] that he held them in his hand,[181] that he upholds heaven and earth,[182]

and that he grants heaven and earth to his worshippers.[183] But very soon Indra is praised for having made Heaven and Earth;[184] and then, when the poet remembers that Heaven and Earth had been praised elsewhere as the parents of the G.o.ds, and more especially as the parents of Indra, he does not hesitate for a moment, but says:[185]

"What poets living before us have reached the end of all thy greatness? for thou hast indeed begotten thy father and thy mother together[186] from thy own body!"

That is a strong measure, and a G.o.d who once could do that, was no doubt capable of anything afterward. The same idea, namely that Indra is greater than heaven and earth, is expressed in a less outrageous way by another poet, who says[187] that Indra is greater than heaven and earth, and that both together are only a half of Indra. Or again:[188] "The divine Dyaus bowed before Indra, before Indra the great Earth bowed with her wide s.p.a.ces." "At the birth of thy splendor Dyaus trembled, the Earth trembled for fear of thy anger."[189]

Thus, from one point of view, Heaven and Earth were the greatest G.o.ds, they were the parents of everything, and therefore of the G.o.ds also, such as Indra and others.

But, from another point of view, every G.o.d that was considered as supreme at one time or other, must necessarily have made heaven and earth, must at all events be greater than heaven and earth, and thus the child became greater than the father, ay, became the father of his father. Indra was not the only G.o.d that created heaven and earth. In one hymn[190] that creation is ascribed to Soma and Pushan, by no means very prominent characters; in another[191] to Hira_n_yagarbha (the golden germ); in another again to a G.o.d who is simply called Dhat_ri_, the Creator,[192] or Vi_s_vakarman,[193] the maker of all things. Other G.o.ds, such as Mitra and Savit_ri_, names of the sun, are praised for upholding Heaven and Earth, and the same task is sometimes performed by the old G.o.d Varu_n_a[194] also.

What I wish you to observe in all this is the perfect freedom with which these so-called G.o.ds or Devas are handled, and particularly the ease and naturalness with which now the one, now the other emerges as supreme out of this chaotic theogony. This is the peculiar character of the ancient Vedic religion, totally different both from the Polytheism and from the Monotheism as we see it in the Greek and the Jewish religions; and if the Veda had taught us nothing else but this _henotheistic_ phase, which must everywhere have preceded the more highly-organized phase of Polytheism which we see in Greece, in Rome, and elsewhere, the study of the Veda would not have been in vain.

It may be quite true that the poetry of the Veda is neither beautiful, in our sense of the word, nor very profound; but it is instructive.

When we see those two giant spectres of Heaven and Earth on the background of the Vedic religion, exerting their influence for a time, and then vanishing before the light of younger and more active G.o.ds, we learn a lesson which it is well to learn, and which we can hardly learn anywhere else--the lesson _how G.o.ds were made and unmade_--how the Beyond or the Infinite was named by different names in order to bring it near to the mind of man, to make it for a time comprehensible, until, when name after name had proved of no avail, a nameless G.o.d was felt to answer best the restless cravings of the human heart.

I shall next translate to you the hymn to which I referred before as addressed to the Rivers. If the Rivers are to be called deities at all, they belong to the cla.s.s of terrestrial deities. But the reason why I single out this hymn is not so much because it throws new light on the theogonic process, but because it may help to impart some reality to the vague conceptions which we form to ourselves of the ancient Vedic poets and their surroundings. The rivers invoked are, as we shall see, the real rivers of the Punjab, and the poem shows a much wider geographical horizon than we should expect from a mere village-bard.[195]

1. "Let the poet declare, O Waters, your exceeding greatness, here in the seat of Vivasvat.[196] By seven and seven they have come forth in three courses, but the Sindhu (the Indus) exceeds all the other wandering rivers by her strength.

2. "Varu_n_a dug out paths for thee to walk on, when thou rannest to the race.[197] Thou proceedest on a precipitous ridge of the earth, when thou art lord in the van of all the moving streams.