explaining the wonders of nature. It is curious to observe the absence of anything like star-worship in India among the Aryan nations in general. A few

of the stars only, such as were connected with human affairs, determining certain seasons, and marking the time of rain (Hyades), the return of calmer weather (Pleiades), or the time for mowing (Krittikâs), were noticed and named, but they never rose to the rank of the high gods. They were less interesting to the dwellers in India, because they did not exercise the same influence on their daily life as they do in Europe. There was of course no settled system in this pantheon, the same phenomena being often represented by different agents, and different phenomena by the same agents. The gods, however, had evidently been known before they were distributed into three classes, as gods of the sky, of the earth, and of the clouds1.

Other Classifications of Gods.

(o If we call this creation and likewise classification of the Devas or gods, the first philosophy of the human race, we can clearly see that it was not artificial or the work of one individual only, but was suggested by nature herself. Earth, air, and sky, or again, morning, noon, and night, spring, summer, and winter, are triads clearly visible in nature, and therefore, under different names and forms, mirrored in ancient mythology in every part of the world. These triads are very different from the later number assigned to the gods. Though the Devas are known in the Rig-veda and the

1 M. M., Contributions to the Science of Mythology, p. 475.

E

Avesta as thirty-three, I doubt whether there is any physical necessity for this number. It seems rather due to a taste very common among uncivilised tribes of playing with numbers and multiplying them to any extent 2. We see the difficulty experienced by the Brâhmans themselves when they had to fill the number of thirty-three and give their names. Sometimes they are called three times eleven; but when we ask who these three times eleven are, we find no real tradition, but only more or less systematising theories. We are told that they were the gods in the sky, on earth, and in the clouds (I, 139, 11), or again that they were Vasus, Rudras, Âdityas, Visve Devas, and Maruts 3, but the number of each of these classes of gods seems to have been originally seven rather than eleven. Even this number of seven is taken by some scholars in the general sense of many, like devânâm bhûyishthâh; but it is at all events recognised in the Rigveda VIII, 28, 5, though possibly in a late verse. What we look for in vain in the Veda are the names of seven Maruts or seven Rudras. We can perhaps make out seven Vasus, if, as we are told, they are meant for Agni, the Âdityas, the Marutas, Indra, Ushas, the Asvins and Rudra. The seven Adityas, too, may possibly be counted as Varuna, Mitra, Aryaman, Bhaga, Daksha, Amsa, and Tvashtri, but all this is very uncertain. uncertain. We see in fact the three times eleven replaced by the eight Vasus, the eleven Maruts, and the twelve Adityas, to which two other

1 Satap. Br. XII, 6, 1, p. 205.

2 Contributions, p. 475.

3 Vedanta-Sutras I, 3, 28; and Rig-veda X, 122, 1.

gods are added as leaders, to bring their number up to the required thirty-three.

In still later times the number of the Âdityas, having been taken for the solar light in each successive month, was raised to twelve. I look upon

all these attempts at a classification of the Vedic sube

gods as due once more to the working of a philosophical or systematising spirit. It is not so much the exact number or names of these gods, as the fact that attempts had been made at so early a time to comprehend certain gods under the same name, that interests the philosophical observer.

The Visve or All-gods.

The first step in this direction seems to be represented by the Visve or the Visve Devas. Visva is different from Sarva, all. It means the gods together, Gesammtgötter (cuncti), not simply all the gods (omnes). Sometimes, therefore, the two words can be used together, as Taitt. Br. III, 1,1, Vísvâ bhuvanâni sarvâ, 'all beings together.' The Maruts are called Vísve Marútah, in the sense of all the Maruts together. These Visve, though they belong to the class-gods (Ganas), are different from other class-gods inasmuch as their number is hardly fixed. It would be endless to give the names of all the gods who are praised in the hymns addressed to the Visve Devas. Indra often stands at their head (Indragyeshthâh), but there is hardly one of the Vedic gods who does not at times appear as one of them. What is really important in these Visve is that they represent the first attempt at comprehending the various gods as forming a class, so that even the other classes (Ganas), such as Adityas, Vasus,

し

or Rudras may be comprehended under the wider concept of Visve. It is all the more curious that this important class, important not only for mythological but for philosophical and religious purposes also, should have attracted so little attention hitherto. They are passed over, as a class, even in that rich treasure-house of Vedic Mythology, the fifth volume of Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, but they ought not to be ignored by those who are interested in the progress of the ancient mythological religions from given multiplicity to postulated unity, as an essential character of the godhead.

Tendencies towards Unity among the Gods.

But while this conception of Visve Devas marks the first important approach from the many incoherent gods scattered through nature to a gradually more and more monotheistic phase of thought in the Veda, other movements also tended in the same direction. Several gods, owing to their position in nature, were seen to perform the same acts, and hence a poet might well take upon himself to say that Agni not only acted with Indra or Savitri, but that in certain of his duties Agni was Indra and was Savitri. Hence arose a number of dual gods, such as Indra-Agnî, Mitrâ-Varunau, Agni-Shomau, also the two Asvins. On other occasions three gods were praised as working together, such as Aryaman, Mitra and Varuna, or Agni, Soma and Gandharva, while from another point of view, Vishnu with his three strides represented originally the same heavenly being, as rising in the morning, culminating at noon, and setting in the evening. Another god or goddess, Aditi, was identified with the sky and the air, was

called mother, father, and son, was called all the gods and the five races of men, was called the past and the future. Professor Weber has strangely misunderstood me if he imagines that I designated this phase of religious thought as Henotheism.

Henotheism.

To identify Indra, Agni, and Varuna is one thing, it is syncretism; to address either Indra or Agni or Varuna, as for the time being the only god in existence with an entire forgetfulness of all other gods, is quite another; and it was this phase, so fully developed in the hymns of the Veda, which I wished to mark definitely by a name of its own, calling it Henotheism 1.

Monotheism and Monism.

All these tendencies worked together in one direction, and made some of the Vedic poets see more or less distinctly that the idea of god, if once clearly conceived, included the ideas of being one and without an equal. They thus arrived at the conviction that above the great multitude of gods there must be one supreme personality, and, after a time, they declared that there was behind all the gods that one (Tad Ekam) of which the gods were but various names.

Rv. I, 164, 46. Ekam sat viprâh bahudhâ vadanti, Agnim, Yamam, Mâtarisvânam âhuh.

The sages call that One in many ways, they call it Agni, Yama, Mâtarisvan.

1

This phase of religious thought has been well described in the same fifth volume of Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, p. 352; see also Deussen, Geschichte der Philosophie, I, p. 104.