Hinduism / by Monier Williams.

  • Monier Monier-Williams
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hinduism / by Monier Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    To what deities, then, did the Vedic poets address their prayers and hymns ? This is an interesting inquiry, for these were pro- bably the very deities worshipped under similar names by our Aryan progenitors in their primeval home somewhere on the table-land of Central Asia. The answer is, they worshipped those physical forces before which all nations, if guided solely by the light of nature, have in the early period of their life in- stinctively bowed down, and before which even the more civilized and enlightened have always been compelled to bend in awe and reverence, if not in adoration. Their religion was what may be called in one word physiolatry. To our Aryan forefathers in their Asiatic home God’s power was exhibited in the forces of nature even more strikingly than to ourselves. Lands, houses, flocks, herds, men, and animals were more frequently than in Western climates at the mercy of winds, fire, and water, and the sun’s rays possessed a potency quite beyond the experience of any European country. We cannot be surprised, then* that these forces were regarded as actual manifestations either of one deity in different moods or of separate rival deities contending for supremacy. Nor is it won- derful that these mighty agencies should have been at first poetically personified, and afterwards, when invested with forms, attributes, and individuality, worshipped as distinct gods. It was only natural, too, that a varying supremacy and varying honours should have been accorded to each deified force—to the air, the rain, the storm, the sun, or fire—accord-
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