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The Pantheon of the Veda
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tain amount of the complications and entanglements of human life must be imported into mythology before it becomes mythology. Otherwise it remains philosophy, primitive cosmic philosophy, or primitive empirical natural science.

Let me paraphrase a statement made some years ago in a learned journal.[1] Mythological investigation must draw a sharp line between the primary attributes of a mythic personage which are the cause of the personification, and the attributes and events which are assigned to him or her, and are supposed to happen after the personification had been completed. Zeus, as we all know, originally meant "sky," and Zeus pater was the personified "Father Sky," contrasted with "Mother Earth." But it would be foolish to search for these primary qualities of Zeus or the other Greek gods in a play of Euripides, where the gods are afflicted with all the passions and weaknesses of mortal men. Yet he who refuses to mythologise on the basis of Euripides' treatment need not therefore be sceptical about the naturalistic origin of most of the Greek gods; he may be willing at the right time, and in the right stage of the history of any myth, to point out the physical factors or the physical events which gave it a start. But to be present at the right time, that is not always so easy.

  1. ↑ Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xv., pp. 185, 186.
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