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+902+. Elaborate magical systems are found in some of the ancient national religions. In India the Atharva-Veda, though it contains a mass of crude old material, is nevertheless recognized as one of the sacred books, standing by the side of the Rig-Veda, though of less authority and significance than that.
There is no evidence of the practice in Babylonia; an indication of its existence in Assyria is possibly found in an Old Testament passage. Its existence in early times in India is held to be implied in the Rig-Veda.
It is not necessary here to enter into a discussion as to the original conception of Indra, and the place occupied by him in the early Aryan Pantheon, whether he was originally regarded as a god of war, or a god of weather; what is important for our purpose is the fact that it is Indra to whom a disproportionate number of the hymns of the Rig-Veda are addressed, that it is from him the much desired boon of rain and abundant water is besought, and that the feat which above all others redounded to his praise, and is ceaselessly glorified both by the god himself, and his grateful worshippers, is precisely the feat by which the Grail heroes, Gawain and Perceval, rejoiced the hearts of a suffering folk, i.e., the restoration of the rivers to their channels, the 'Freeing of the Waters. Tradition relates that the seven great rivers of India had been imprisoned by the evil giant, Vritra, or Ahi, whom Indra slew, thereby releasing the streams from their captivity.
Instead of temples rock-altars, cromlechs, and other rustic structures were used among the Celtic nations by the Druids, who were at the same time priests, magicians, and medicine-men. Their religious doctrines, which recall in many particulars those of the Rig-Veda, were perpetuated from generation to generation by the aid of songs.
Their first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech, is audible still in the Rig-Veda, a bundle of hymns tied together, four thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of the latter led to that of the Sun and ignited the antique altars.
In Sanskrit dyu, as a noun, means "sky" and "day"; and there are many passages in the Rig-Veda where the character of the god Dyaus, as the personification of the sky or the brightness of the ethereal heavens, is unmistakably apparent. This key unlocks for us one of the secrets of Greek mythology.
"Mortal has made the immortal," the Rig-Veda explicitly declares. The making was surely slow. In tracing the genealogy of the divine, it has been found that its root was fear. The root, dispersed by light, ultimately dissolved. But, meanwhile, it founded religion, which, revealed in storm and panic, for prophets had ignorance and dread. The gods were not then.
Aphrodite, though originally the moon-goddess, like the German Horsel, had before Homer's time acquired many of the attributes of the dawn-goddess Athene, while her lunar characteristics had been to a great extent transferred to Artemis and Persephone. In her renovated character, as goddess of the dawn, Aphrodite became identified with Charis, who appears in the Rig-Veda as dawn-goddess.
He is the upholder of order; just, yet the dispenser of grace, and merciful to the penitent. Worship is made up of oblations and prayers. It must be sincere. The gods will not tolerate deceit. They require faith. Of the last things and the last times the Rig-Veda hardly speaks. The Vedic hymns have much to say of the origin of things, but little, except in the last book, of the final issues.
In the Rig-Veda, there are verses which were subsequently accounted so sacred that if a soudra overheard them the ignominy of his caste was effaced. The verses, the work of shepherds who were singers, are invocations to the dawn, to the first flushes of the morning, to the skies' heightening hues, and the vermillion moment when the devouring Asiatic sun appears.
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