Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/206

This page needs to be proofread.
190
The Religion of the Veda

"Through Faith the gods obtain their divine quality; Faith, the goddess, is the foundation of the world. May she pleased come to our sacrifice, Bring our wish as her child, and grant us immortality!

"Faith, the goddess, is the first-born of divine order, Upholder of all, foundation of the world, That Faith do we revere with our oblations; May she create for us an immortal world." (Taittirīya Brāhmana 3. 12. 3. 1, 2.)


"Faith dwells within the gods, Faith dwells upon this world, Faith, the mother of wishes – With oblations do we prosper her." (Taittirīya Brāhmana 2. 8. 8).


So far so good. All that is still a development of the idea of faith in harmony with a decent belief in personal gods. Unfortunately, the Vedic conception of faith, at least the prominent or average conception sinks to a much lower plane. In the main and in the end, faith expresses itself in works, and the Brahmans who are anything but mealy-mouthed have seen to it that they shall be benefited by these works. In other words, he who gives baksheesh (dakshinā) to the Brahmans, he has faith (çraddhā). In a hymn that is otherwise not badly pitched the poet requests the personified goddess Faith to make his poetic work take well with the liberal sacrificer, and to make him

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.