Crude Science in Aryan Cults

IN the Hebrew Genesis the creation of the world is the result of a divine decree. God spake, and it was done. His simple fiat called all things into existence, and is regarded as a sufficient explanation of them. This attitude of mind towards questions of cosmogony is peculiarly Semitic.

Wholly different is the spirit in which the Aryan has always approached such problems. A solution of them depending upon the intervention of a deus ex machina would not be accepted by him as any solution at all. In the very beginnings of his intellectual development, so far as they have left any traces of themselves, he shows a marked tendency to examine into the origin and essence of things, and to discover their real causal principle. This characteristic is especially remarkable in the Indo-Aryan mind. Not only in the later philosophical and theological treatises, but even in the earliest monument of Indian literature and the oldest record of Aryan thought, the Rig-Veda, there is much speculation of this sort, often curiously and subtilely interwoven with abstruse and enigmatic symbolisms, and occasionally lighted up by flashes of genuine poetic feeling ; and it is truly wonderful with what boldness the sacred singer attacks the toughest themes, and to what depth he sometimes succeeds in probing mysteries which no mind has ever yet completely fathomed. In the midst of his hymn, he suddenly starts off in childish chase of some gaseous will-o’the-wisp, and stops only when he finds himself up to the neck in metaphysical quagmire. Unanswerable questions of ontology and cosmogony seem to have had a strange fascination for the Vedic seer, who is constantly merging the poet into the philosopher, breaking off descriptions of phenomena to search after noumena, fluttering about in hopeless queries and quandaries, and vainly beating the wings of his imagination against the invisible, but impassable, barriers which separate the knowable from the unknowable.

“ Who beheld the first-born ? Who saw the bodiless bring forth the embodied ? Where, indeed, are the life, the blood, and the soul of the earth ? ” “ Who in the form of the unborn propped up these six regions of the firmament?” “ What was the fulcrum, what the lever, what the means by which the all-seeing all-maker established the earth and stretched out the sky?” “ What was the wood, and what the tree, from which they formed the heavens and the earth, that they stand together undecaying and ever-enduring whilst many days and dawns have passed away ? ”

Such are a few specimens of the puzzling questions with which the Vedic seers were forever vexing their inquisitive souls.

There is one hymn (x. 129) which is especially noteworthy as the production of a thinker who approaches the sublime and mysterious subject wholly free from mythological bias or theological preconceptions ; and although he does not formulate his ideas with precision, nor unfold them in orderly sequence, but rather throws them out as hints and quasi-hypotheses, the process of his reasoning is logical, and the attitude of his mind strictly scientific, He goes back to a time, if time it may be called, when there was neither entity nor non-entity, and seeks to discover how existence sprang from this absolute void, this unthinkable negation of nothingness.

“ 1. Non-being was not, nor was there being then ; nor was there space nor sky beyond. What enclosed it ? Where was it, and of what the receptacle ? Was it water, the yawning gap ?

“ 2. Death was not, nor deathlessness then; nor of night and day was there distinction. Breathless breathed by selfsustaining power that monad (tad ekam) ; beside it there was nought else whatever.

“ 3. Darkness was ; by darkness shrouded in the beginning, a formless sea, was this all. The potency which was wrapped in emptiness, that monad, was developed by the power of heat.

“ 4. First hovered over it desire, the primal germ of mind ; the bond of being in non-being the seers discovered by searching thoughtfully in their hearts.

“ 5. Athwart was stretched a ray. Was it from beneath or from above ? There were impregnations and mighty forces ; peculiar receptiveness from below, vigorous energy from above.

“ 6. Who, indeed, knows, who can declare whence it sprang, whence came this evolution ? The gods were produced later through this evolution. Who knows, then, whence it derived its being?

“ 7. Whence this evolution arose, whether self-originated or not, he who is the overseer in the highest heaven knows perchance, or even he knows not.”

After raising the query whether the genesis of creation may not be sought in water, the yawning gap (gahanam gabhîram corresponding etymologically and cosmologically to the ginnunga gap of the Edda), the Vedic singer pushes his inquiries still farther into the arcana of primeval chaos. The use of the word ambhas instead of ap implies that this original element is regarded as the essence, rather than the substance, of water. The poet then affirms the unity of this primogenial principle, whatever it may have been, strips it of all qualities, attributes, and conditions, and lifts it into the highest realm of the abstract and the absolute by declaring that it breathed breathless, that is, without the agency of air, by its own inherent, selfsustaining energy. This principle is not a personality or being of any kind, but is spoken of as tad ekam, that unit or monad ; in other words, that elementary, indivisible, unextended, immaterial, and indestructible point of force, which plays such an important part in the philosophy of Leibnitz as the determining cause of all phenomena. In this respect it resembles the ultimate atom of Leukippos and the ἀρχῆ ; that is, the unconditioned and undeveloped materia prima or pure potency postulated by Anaximander.

The primum mobile or first impulse to movement is said here to be power of heat, one of the most subtile and impalpable of forces and the universal source and symbol of life. But this heat is not only a vital, but also an intelligent, force; it combines the fire of Herakleitos with the νους of Anaxagoras; it sets the inert and inane vortex in motion, and puts the chaotic elements in cosmic order; it is heat in the conscious form of desire or love, the first germ of intellectual activity, the same power that has been discovered by sages expanding and pulsating in their own hearts towards the great ends of generation and creation. The bond which bridges the vast and mysterious chasm between non-existence and existence is described as a ray shooting across the abyss ; an idea which reappears in the cosmogony of the Manichæans, who assert that the first impulse to creation was given by a ray falling from the region of light into the region of darkness. How this effusion of fecundating force was produced, whence this vigorous emanation came, the poet confesses himself unable to tell, and is finally content to escape the difficulty by the rhetorician’s trick of taking refuge in tropes and metaphors, thus imparting to his ignorance a semblance of knowledge by clothing it in familiar phallic imagery. The gods, he says, are incompetent to furnish a solution, since they, as mere personifications of natural phenomena, are later results and outgrowths of this development, and it would be absurd to appeal to them for an explanation of processes of which they themselves are the products. Possibly the chief supervisor of the universe, who sits on high and sees it go, may know how it started on its course; equally possible is it, however, that he, too, is only a comparatively recent superintendent and curator of preëxistent materials and forces and knows nothing of their origin ; sublime as his functions are, they may be purely administrative and not creative.

From the very earliest period of Brahmanical speculation this hymn has exercised the exegetical ingenuity of Indian scholiasts, and furnished occasion for all kinds of fanciful exposition and transcendental twaddle, each sect endeavoring to twist the sacred texts into props for its peculiar creed. A careful analysis will show that it contains the prolific germs of nearly every important phase of Greek cosmogony from Thales to Plotinus. It even hints at the theory of spontaneous generation, and, in its repeated references to evolution, emphasizes the popular catchword of modern science. Like all ancient cosmogonies, it really explains nothing. It is interesting only as indicating a scientific tendency of the Aryan mind, a spirit of investigation and speculation concerning the phenomena of the universe which has put forth many crude and fantastic theories, but has not been without worthy witnesses of itself in every age, and has worked out, in our own day, the great systems of thought associated with the names of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.

The same scientific tendency that is perceptible in Indo-Aryan cosmogonies pervades also Indo-Aryan theogonies and theories of worship. In our own day, the progress of knowledge has left the sorcerer in a very low estate, but in primitive society he was the only man of science, the “ upward-striving man,” as Grimm calls him. The wizard, as the word implies, was originally the wise man par excellence. Milton, in his ode On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, speaks of the wise men from the East who came to worship at the manger in Bethlehem as “ the star-led wizards.” Magic is based upon the scientific assumption that the laws of the universe are fixed and regular in their operation, and that, by discovering them, the forces of nature can be controlled and made to subserve human interests. In the presence of powers which are variable in their character and arbitrary in their actions, man can only prostrate himself in abject adoration and beg for mercy. All that he can do is to propitiate them by supplication and by sacrifice. But the magician, instead of bowing down to the gods in servile fear and craving their compassion, or bribing them with gifts, commands them, and, by virtue of his occult science and powers of enchantment, forces them to do his will.

This is the fundamental characteristic of Brahmanism as a cult. It is no worship at all, in the sense of mere reverence and homage paid to supernatural beings, but a vast and complicated system of applied magic. So far as isolated prescriptions are concerned, the Brahmanical and Levitical rituals present some striking points of resemblance, especially in the manner of performing animal sacrifices. But the underlying principle and informing spirit are wholly different. Levitical precepts are positive injunctions originating in the simple will of Jehovah. No attempt is ever made to discover a reason for them in the nature of things. Thou shalt do this and thou shalt not do that, for “ thus saith the Lord ; ” and that’s the end of it. The expositor of the Brahmanical ritual, on the contrary, endeavors everywhere to trace the ceremony to some principle in nature, to connect it somehow with the laws of the universe, and thus impart to it a permanency and solidity which could not be predicated of an arbitrary decree, however lofty the source from which it might emanate. What he is constantly seeking is a firm footing for his rite, a knowledge which he can stand upon with the assurance that it cannot be shaken and will not slip from under his feet. He is not satisfied with any form of words or any ceremonial until he can say of it pratitishthati ya evam veda: he who knows this stands fast. His assumptions may be absurd, his inferences illogical, his symbolisms far-fetched and flimsy, and his speculations sheer twaddle ; nevertheless he reasons and philosophizes, observes and draws general conclusions from supposed facts.

The whole structure of Brahmanical ritualism is built upon a system of correspondences, a mystical relation of types to antitypes, often expressed in the form of numerical proportion. Mere, too, as in other fields of investigation, etymology plays an important, though precarious part; and many a sacrificial rite or sacred observance, when traced to its origin, is found to spring from the forked root of a poor pun. In the Aitareya Brâhmanam (II. 1, 4), the Word is said to have made all things. Thus in the earliest speculative theology of India, the Gnostic theory of the Logos is anticipated and its creative power asserted in language identical with that used in the Gospel according to St. John. The mysterious, telephonic character of speech as the swift and invisible vehicle of thought, conveying its freightage of intelligence instantaneously from person to person and from place to place, excited the naïve wonder of the old Indo-Aryan, and at a very early period led to its deification as the goddess Vâch. A peculiar potency was ascribed to it, especially when woven into rhythmic form. The fascination which metrical expression, even as a mere jingle and jargon, still retains for the youth of individuals was yet more strongly felt in the youth of the race. The simple song was repeated as a spell and the rude chant mumbled as a charm.

The vague and crude notion of a mystic virtue inherent in such collocations of words grew in strength and consistency with the lapse of time, and finally assumed the authoritative character of a divine revelation and sacred tradition, and became fully developed and systematized in the ritual hand-books known as Brâhmanas. In these treatises such metre is endowed with a particular property and assigned its own place ; the objects for the attainment of which it may be used are also minutely specified. The incantatory quality or essence of a verse, its so-called rasa, may depend upon its radical signification or its rhythmical structure, whichever happens to furnish the easiest point of connection and the most suggestive symbolism. Thus a person who wishes an increase of live stock and wealth in cattle must have a formula in the Jagatî metre repeated at the sacrifice, because Jagat means moving ; but if children are desired, he must employ a Dvipad or verse of two feet, which is supposed to be potent for the procreation of bipeds. Dimeters, trimeters, quadrimeters and pentameters correspond with double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple forms of life, and become the efficient cause of their production. Perhaps in this whimsical theory there may be a dim perception or faint presentiment of the fact that all nature is bound together by continuous and indissoluble links of affinity; a truth, the establishment of which is one of the latest and most brilliant achievements of modern science. There is nothing that the priest cannot accomplish by a proper manipulation of the metres, whether for good or for evil; by purposely jumbling them he can even work confusion in nature and beget monstrosities. It is necessary, however, that all parts of the magical machinery should be accurately adjusted and kept in perfect order. A false accent or the mispronunciation of a single letter breaks the connection, so to speak, and vitiates the whole ceremonial, just as the slightest mathematical error invalidates all the computations of the astronomer. In this system of worship reduced to an exact science, grammar was cultivated as a means of grace, and phonetics and prosody were prized as passports to eternal bliss. The beginnings of geometry in India, also, were its applications to mensuration in the construction of altars. Here, too, we have the same rude symbolism founded upon external resemblances and specious analogies : he who would attain heaven must offer sacrifice upon an altar in the form of a falcon with outspread wings, “ for the falcon is the swiftest and strongest of birds, and thus the sacrificer mounts upward, falcon-like, to the celestial world.” For other purposes, the altar must be built in the shape of a heron, a hawk, a tortoise, a chariot-pole, or a chariot-wheel. Diseases were treated on a like principle. The wizard of the Atharva-Veda healed the sick and restored the decrepit to health and vigor by putting them into hollow trees or pushing them through holes in rocks, as signs of their new birth and bodily regeneration ; and cured jaundice in men and yellows in cattle by the crude homœopathy of yellow herbs and yellow birds. A survival of this superstition is the buff pigeon which the European peasant keeps in his house to “ take on ” fevers and distempers that might otherwise assail his family.

Occasionally the Brahmanical exegete, in the midst of his descriptions of the ritual, runs off into little episodes of scientific explanation; and it is interesting to note how close he sometimes comes to the discovery of a great truth. Thus, in the Aitareya Brâhmanam (III. 44), it is said that the hotar in repeating the s’âstra should be guided in the modulation of his voice by the course of the sun and the intensity of the solar heat from sunrise to sunset. As a matter of fact, he then continues, the sun never rises and never sets, but maintains a fixed place in the heavens, and produces the phenomena of day and night by turning on its axis. In no case does it go down (na kadâchana nimrochati), but simply turns round (viparyasyate). When this revolution of the sun presents the dark side to us, we have night; the light side, however, illuminates other regions and makes day in an opposite direction. It must be confessed that this theory, in clearness and simplicity and suggestiveness, is far superior to that which Christian theologians upheld and contended for during so many centuries and with such extreme bitterness. The consideration of chief importance, in this case, is not the correctness of the hypothesis, but the free spirit of investigation and the readiness to accept its results which characterize the Brâhman’s speculations.

The grounds upon which the Christian apologist is wont to rest his belief in the Bible as a divine revelation are chiefly moral and historical, and sometimes metaphysical. The Brahmanical defender of the faith also urges the same considerations in proof of the supernatural character of the Veda, which is to him self-radiant like the sun, and evinces its divine origin in its wonderful adaptation to all classes and conditions of men, being the refuge alike of the ignorant and of the learned (idam saranam ajnânâm idam eva vijânatâm). But he does not stop here. In his effort to be scientific he carries the discussion into the province of acoustics, and endeavors to prove the eternity of the Veda by showing that sound, the medium of Vedic revelation, is eternal. And thus a question of hermeneutics is made to hinge ultimately on a point in physics.

The error of mistaking illustration for argument, especially if the former is drawn from any fact in nature, is very common with Brahmanical theologians. Thus the Vadakalais assert that man comes to God by his own voluntary act and personal exertion, clinging to Him as the young monkey clings to its mother; this doctrine is called markata-nyâya, or the monkey-method of salvation. The Tenkalais, on the other hand, affirm that man in coming to God is not a free agent and has no power to help himself, but is carried to Him as the kitten is carried by its mother : this doctrine is called mârjâla-nyâya or the cat-method of salvation. These systems of redemption, which might be characterized respectively as the simian and the feline, correspond essentially to Arminianism and Calvinism in Christian theology. In every discussion between adherents of the two sects, it is curious to observe how pertinaciously each disputant reverts to, and revolves round, his own trope, and appeals to “great creating nature” in confirmation of his theory. “ Does not the young monkey, when it sees danger, seek safety by clinging to its mother ? ” “ Certainly it does.” “ Well then.” “ Does not the cat, when her kitten is in peril, seize it and bear it to a place of safety ? ” “ Certainly she does.” “Well then.” Thus each silences the other with an apt figure of speech and is convinced that his doctrine must be true, since it has its foundation in the laws of the universe.

A still more striking example of quasi-scientific tendencies in Aryan religions is furnished by Indian asceticism. Brahmanical and Buddhistic ascetics differ essentially from Christian ascetics both in the means which they employ and the ends which they desire to attain. The yoga of Patanjali has hardly more in common with European monasticism than with the philosophy of Antisthenes. Greek cynicism was really an Indian exotic transplanted to Hellenic soil, where, owing to the uncongenial brightness of earth and sky, it failed to attain its normal development of sturdy and tranquil austerity, but degenerated into a sickly and unseemly shrub bearing only the bitter fruits of moroseness and misanthropy. There is something factitious in the churlish irritability and snarling cynanthropy of a Diogenes, indicating a want of harmony and originary connection between the asperity of his aims and the allurements of his environment, and presenting a significant contrast to the cheerful self-renunciation and perfect serenity of the gymnosophist, who has acquired such complete supremacy over carnal appetites and passions and the seductions of the senses, as not even to be fretted by them into censoriousness. The ascendency of the higher faculties has led to the extinction of the lower propensities, so that the pain of the physical abstinence seems absorbed and lost sight of in the genuineness and fullness of the spiritual aspiration.

In like manner, the asceticism of the Christian monk is but an indiscriminate and illogical self-torture as compared with the well-grounded and thoroughly systematized austerities of the yogî and the bhikshu. The fanatical friar scourges himself, wears an excoriating shirt of hair-cloth, mingles ashes with his food, drinks filthy water, and does a variety of painful and disgusting things, simply because they are painful and disgusting. Whatever is offensive to the natural man is assumed to be edifying to the spiritual man. This is the sole principle which governs him in his blind pursuit of sanctity. But the most zealous and fervent fakir never torments himself on account of any virtue supposed to be inherent in mere physical suffering, nor endures privations because they are unpleasant. His aim is not so much to mortify the flesh as to emancipate the spirit; and if this purpose could be attained by pampering the body, he would greatly prefer to do so. In his most rigorous austerities he proceeds according to a regular system based upon a knowledge of human physiology and a study of natural history. If he sits for days cross-legged, holding a great toe in each hand and gazing intently at the tip of his nose, he knows why he does it and can give a rational account of his conduct.

Yoga means junction, and is used in philosophical terminology to express union with the Supreme Spirit. In order to effect this absorption in the Deity, man must free himself from all the carnal ties and sensual conditions which constitute what is commonly called life or individual existence. It is not necessary, and would be tedious, to enumerate the different agencies employed for the attainment of this end. Indeed, they vary with varying circumstances ; all tend, however, to produce complete concentration of the mind by reducing to a minimum every bodily want and bodily function. Suffice it to say that the greatest importance is attached to diet, posture, and breathing, as means of promoting mental abstraction and accomplishing the final emancipation of the soul from the bondage and limitations of the senses.

The yogî believes that whatever diminishes the volume of carbonic acid exhaled from the lungs contributes to the detachment of the spirit from its thralldom to matter and its release from the necessity of transmigration, and helps it onward towards that state of ecstatic isolation and perfect beatitude known as kaivalya. This is why he practices so assiduously the seemingly absurd religious exercise called kumbhaka, which consists merely in holding the breath as long as possible. The normal respirations of a man average about twelve a minute, during which time he exhales a little more than fifteen cubic inches of carbonic acid. If he can hold his breath for ninety-five seconds the volume of carbonic acid exhaled is reduced to less than one cubic inch a minute. Pure air, especially if cool and dry, increases this exhalation and intensifies the desire for food, and is therefore favorable to great vigor and activity of the vital energies. A warm, moist, deoxygenated atmosphere, having about the temperature of ordinary animal heat, diminishes the amount of carbonic acid emitted, weakens the appetite, and lowers the tone of the whole system. But this is precisely what the yogî wishes to accomplish. From his point of view nothing retards growth in grace like good ventilation. Accordingly he takes up his abode in a guhâ or small cave, closes the entrance with clay, and there, undisturbed by light, or sound, or fresh air, gives himself up to contemplation of the absolute and thoughts of the unthinkable.

A child has warmer blood and breathes more rapidly than an adult, and starves more easily. A bird, with a high temperature, quick pulsations of the heart, and short, panting respirations, will die in two or three days if it is deprived of food, and very soon suffocates in close air. A tortoise, which has an extremely sluggish circulation of the blood and breathes only three times a minute, can live for months without food, and be kept for hours in a vessel hermetically sealed and yet produce a hardly perceptible deoxygenation of the air in which it is confined. A toad may remain a whole day in the exhausted receiver of an air-pump without the slightest injury or apparent inconvenience to it. It is facts like these which the yogî observes and applies to his spiritual discipline. He studies and imitates the habits of reptiles and hibernating animals in order to acquire the powers which they possess, and even lets them regulate his diet. The turtle and the water-lizard, the Himalayan marmot, the badger, and the bear prescribe his food. In conformity to their tastes he eats a few soft and succulent roots and fruits, lettuce and other lactiferous plants, rice, wheat, barley, milk, sugar, honey and butter, and scrupulously abstains from salt and every kind of sour.

Again, the yogî avoids all contact with metals. It is well known that hardware merchants, particularly in cold weather, need a greater amount of sustenance than dealers in woolen goods and other non-conducting substances. Metals, as the best conductors of heat, disturb the equilibrium of temperature between the body and the surrounding air, and thus excite the senses and strengthen the consciousness of individual existence which the yogî seeks to destroy. Such an environment would therefore be fatal to ascetic contemplation and that complete concentration of thought by which absorption in the Supreme Being is to be attained. This lesson is also learned from hibernating animals, which make their beds of nonconducting materials. The yogî profits by their example and prepares his couch of kusa grass and wool.

The exhalation of carbonic acid, or, what amounts to the same thing, the consumption of oxygen, is supposed to be diminished by the low and continuous muttering of certain monosyllables, the chief of which is om, although bam, ham, lam, yam, and several other words are also used. Om, however, is considered most effective for hypnotic purposes and may be regarded, in this province, as an example of the survival of the fittest, since it is now almost exclusively employed. This exercise is called japa and is designed to produce slower and deeper breathing, somnolence, and the emancipation of the soul from the dominion of the senses. The yogî is convinced that the longer he can make the interval between his pulmonary respirations, the nearer he approaches the goal of his spiritual aspirations. Herein lie the significance and sacredness of the mystical syllable om.

Tapas, which is usually translated penance, expresses in reality a very different conception. It means heat ; not as some writers affirm, because heat is one of the principal causes of pain, but because it is preëminently a purifying agent, purging all things arid burning up the dross. Devotion, in the Christian sense of the term, is a feeling wholly foreign to the heart of the yogî. He is never what we call a pious man. His austerities are not intended to please or propitiate the gods ; on the contrary, there is nothing that excites so great fear in celestial minds as the persistent tapas of the Indian saint. It was Satan who tempted St. Anthony with visions of voluptuous women ; but, in the old Aryan legend, it was Indra who sent heavenly nymphs to disturb Visvâmitra in his ascetic practices and finally succeeded in seducing him through the charms of the beautiful Menukâ, who became the mother of Sakuntala. Even the boy Dhruva so frightened the gods by his intense fervor that they besought Vishnu to put a stop to it. But Vishnu declined to interfere, and the youthful rishi, by the force of his austerities, ascended to the skies, where he shines forever as the polar star. From this feat he received his other name, Grahâdhâra, “ the pivot of the planets.”

The object of tapas is the acquisition of superhuman power. There is no element of humility or contrition in it; no effort to conciliate or crave the favor of the deities, but rather to compete with them for supremacy. “ Virtue,” says Seneca, “ is man’s own gift to himself, and by it he ceases to be a suppliant and becomes a peer of the gods.” Horace expresses the same sentiment: “Jupiter may bestow upon me life and riches, but I will be indebted to myself for a quiet and contented mind.” Cicero admits it to be the duty of man to thank the gods for vineyards and cornfields, for health and strength, and all physical benefits. “ But who,” he adds, “ ever prayed to Jupiter that he might be good, temperate, and just, or gave tithes to Hercules to be made wise ? ” From time immemorial this has been the intellectual attitude of the Aryan towards the gods. The Vedic rishi implores Indra and the Maruts for wealth in cattle and horses, for victory in battle, and for vigorous sons; but the ascetic rishi, who despises external things and seeks spiritual ascendency through the subjection and extinction of the senses, puts his trust solely in himself, and, by dint of knowledge (jnâna) and the discipline and development of his own faculties, wins success in defiance of the deities.

The evolution of monotheism among the early Aryans furnishes an additional illustration of the tendency to scientific method in the growth of their religious conceptions. Among Semitic peoples, the idea of one god has been uniformly reached by a process of theocratic centralization, whereby all power has been gradually concentrated in the hands of a single tribal god, who has outstripped his rivals and seated himself as an absolute autocrat upon the throne of the universe. If the Semitic gods were originally personifications of the forces of nature and particularly of solar phenomena, this side of their character was very soon obscured by the strongly anthropomorphic features they assumed and the strictly political functions assigned to them. Now and then, they may appear clothed in cloud, and tempest, and fire; but for the most part they have outgrown and discarded these primitive habiliments and put on the pomp and pageantry of human sovereigns. This accounts for the mythological poverty of the Semitic religions, the extreme difficulty of tracing their deities and demi-gods to their meteorological origin, and the facility with which they lend themselves to the support of Euhemeristic theories.

The Aryan, on the contrary, arrived at the idea of one god by observing and generalizing the facts of the physical world, by recognizing the interdependence of all natural phenomena, and referring them to a common principle or general law, postulated either as a personal first cause or as an immanent and over-operative force. The mental process by which he came to this conclusion was precisely the same as that by which Newton established the doctrine of universal gravitation. Polytheism, with its populous pantheon of rival deities, was superseded and set aside by the monotheistic conception, just as the Ptolemaic system, with its cumbrous machinery of cycles and epicycles, was superseded and set aside by the discoveries of Kopernik and Kepler. The first suspicion of the existence of a single, subtile force, manifesting itself in all the operations of nature, originated in the perception of the ubiquity and universality of heat, the vivifying influence of which was perceived in all the movements and transformations of the material and spiritual world. It shone forth in the sun, the dawn, and the lightning. Its effects were observable in the germination and growth of vegetation, in the varied colors of earth and sky, in the refreshing verdure of spring and the rich hues of autumn. Thus, this element came to be regarded as the omnipresent and exhaustless spirit of life, the source of vital energy in plants and animals and men, and even in the gods themselves. It was the great creative force latent in chaos, “ the one out of which the all was evolved.” It was ardor (tapas) in the sold of the ascetic. It excited and sustained the passions, melting the heart with love and kindling the consuming fierceness of wrath. Wherever in the Veda the monotheistic idea is expressed, it centres in Agni, the god of fire, of whom the other gods are only subordinate forms or special functions. “ All beings are his branches ; ” “ he comprises all other divinities as the felly incloses the spokes of a wheel; ” “the wise poets in their hymns represent under different forms the wellwinged god who is one; ” “ reverence to that Agni who is in the waters, and has passed into plants and shrubs, and who formed all these worlds.” It would be easy to multiply passages in which the omnipresence and supreme sovereignty of the god of fire are asserted, He is Varuna, the upholder of law and the punisher of sin ; he is Indra, the wielder of the flashing bolt; Mitra the wonder-worker; the far-striding Vishnu, and the radiant Savitri; he is Rudra, the wild ruler of the air, and the hosts of the Maruts, the storm-gods ; he is Bhaga, the giver of good fortune; Pûshan, the protector ; and the Ribhus, the cunning craftsmen and artificers in metals. Visvakarman, the architect of the universe, and Brihaspati, the lord of increase, are merely appellations of Agni. The Asvins, the divine physicians, personify the therapeutic or sanitary effects of warmth and light. Among the Vedic deities, there is scarcely one that does not represent some attribute or office of this vast elemental force, so diverse in its origin, so manifold and mysterious in its manifestations, so marvelous in its operation, so universal in its diffusion, and so powerful in its appeals to the imagination, Fire is preeminently the bright one, the deva, and the root of this word enters into the name for god among nearly all Aryan nations.

Notwithstanding the sharp, schismatic antagonism of religious rites and tenets which characterized the Indian and Iranian scions of the Aryan stock, they agreed in paying reverence to this sacred element. In the Avesta, “ the blazing, beneficent, and pervasive fire” is praised as the soul of nature, the supreme cause of growth, vigor, and splendor in the universe, the one divine principle revealing itself in the diversified phenomena of the physical world. The vague and somewhat fetichistic conception of it entertained by the early priests was exalted and spiritualized by the great Iranian prophet, and formulated as the creator of all life, Ahuramazda, of whom fire was not the substance, but the purest and most perfect symbol.

In Indo-Aryan theology, Brahma expresses the highest conception of abstract being; yet this invisible, immaterial, illimitable, self-existent, eternal, absolute, and incomprehensible essence is only the evolution of a blade of grass. When a child brought a handful of grass to Walt Whitman and asked him what it was, the poet confessed that he could not tell. Had he been better versed in Indian lore, he might have replied: “ Dirty little boy, it is Brahma.” And what a vast field for his fancy to fly or to flounder in would this discovery have opened to him in the development of his graminifolious epic ! Brahma is derived from brih, to grow, and signifies growth, as typified by the commonest and most useful of herbs, a simple leaf of grass. A peculiar power is attributed to emblems of this kind by many savage tribes. The natives of the Chatham Islands exorcise evil spirits with a bunch of spear-grass ; the Kingsmill Islanders use a sprig of a cocoa-nut tree for the same purpose ; and the Todas practice incantations with a twig of the tude-bush. But owing to the intellectual indolence of such low tribes and the feebleness of this faculty of generalization, the object never assumed the character of a type, but remained a mere fetich. With the more highly endowed races, however, this phase of rude rubbish-worship soon passed away and gave place to a refined system of magical symbolism. Thus Brahma came to represent the hidden principle and universal cause of growth. In the Vedic age it meant, not prayer as it is usually translated, but that occult power which was the resultant of the combined ritual machinery of song and sacrifice and ceremonial, and which the priests alone claimed to be able to produce and to direct towards desirable ends, just as electricity is generated by a properly constructed battery and may be applied by expert operators to telegraphic and telephonic purposes. Brahma, in this sense, was recognized as the source of all life aud energy. There was no physical, moral, or spiritual effect which it could not accomplish. It was the one great force in the universe, whether for creation, or preservation, or destruction. By the skillful manipulation of it the priest could cause drought or rain, make the fields barren or fertile, turn the scale of battle, dethrone a king, or even dismay and strike down a god. It gave its name to the sacerdotal caste who were its official guardians, and as metaphysical speculation increased in subtility and the great schools of philosophy arose, Brahma was finally identified with the Supreme Spirit from which all things proceed and to which all things return, the absolute, indivisible, and imperishable essence, into which seers and sages sought to merge their individual existence by means of mental abstraction and intense concentration of thought.

In the history of this single word we can trace the intellectual evolution of the Indo - Aryan race through all its stages from fetichism to pantheism. It furnishes also a striking illustration of the scientific spirit and the tendency to scientific method which distinguish the Aryan mind, even in its relations to the supernatural and its futile attempts to grasp “ the void and formless infinite.”

E. P. Evans.