Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/189

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Transparent and Opaque Gods
173

I went and asked the waning moon, The waning moon replied: "I have been smitten with a sword,[1] My sorry face I hide."

I went and asked the lovely sun, The dear sun gave reply; "Nine days I'll seek, and on the tenth I'll not set in the sky."[2]


The familiar notion that the sun oversees everything[3] appeals in this instance to the simple reasoning power of shepherd folk. A more suitable origin for a shepherd god it is not easy to imagine. They therefore dress him out in shepherd's clothes, feed him on shepherd's food, and turn him into a heavenly bellwether of their flocks. But his real natural history does not seem to me to be very much disguised by the simple-minded fable. We may safely call Pūshan a translucent god.

The most prominent of the gods of the Rig-Veda is Indra. About two hundred and fifty hymns are devoted to his praise, perhaps one-fourth of all the hymns of the collection. No account of Vedic religion can pass by his big personality, and yet his essence and quality are that of lower, rather than higher

  1. ↑ Cf. the Lithuanian folk-song, above, p. 114.
  2. ↑ Professor Chase's rendering, Transactions of the American Philological Association, vol. xxxi., p. 193.
  3. ↑ Ήλιος πανόπτης, Iliad 3. 277; Æschylus, Prometheus Bound, 91.
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