Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/246
we read between the lines, there are those who mock Indra, and those who apologise for him:
"Bring lovely praise to Indra, vying one with the
other, truthful praise, if he himself be true. Even
though one or another says: 'Indra is not, who ever
saw him, who is he that we should praise him?'"
(Rig-Veda 8. 100. 3.)
Or again:
"The terrible one of whom they ask, 'where is he?’
Nay verily they say of him, 'he is not at all'.
He makes shrink the goods of his enemy like a gambler
the stakes of his opponent:
Put your faith in him — "He, O folks, is Indra."
(Rig-Veda 2. 12. 5.)
Hence they that have no faith are called açraddha, "infidel," or anindra, "repudiators of Indra."[1]
Every onward movement of Hindu thought takes place at the expense of the old gods of nature; the divine attribute becomes more important than the mythological person. The individual natural history of the gods becomes a thing of minor interest. In this sense polytheism is decadent even in the hymns of the Rig-Veda themselves. It shows signs of going to seed for philosophy. The gods in turn perform about the same feats of creating and upholding the world: the interest of the poets in the acts has evidently increased at the expense of the
- ↑ Rig-Veda 7. 6. 3 and 5. 2. 3.; 10. 48. 7.