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and, the Oxus and Jaxartes, and did not sail any.

on the sea.

Pursuing this method, we see that we can ask almost any question concerning the condition of the Aryans, and obtain an answer by means of Comparative Philology.

Were they a pastoral people? The very word pastoral gives us the answer. For Pa in Sanskrit means to watch, to guard, as men guard cattle, from which a whole company of words has come in all the Aryan languages.

Here

The results of this method of inquiry, so far as given by Pictet, are these. Some 3000 years B. C.,* the Aryans, as yet undivided into Hindoos, Persians, Kelts, Latins, Greeks, Teutons, and Slavi, were living in Central Asia, in a region of which Bactriana was the centre. they must have remained long enough to have developed their admirable language, the mother-tongue of those which we know. They were essentially a pastoral, but not a nomad people, having fixed homes. They had oxen, horses, sheep, goats, hogs, and domestic fowls. Herds of cows fed in pastures, each the property of a community, and each with a cluster of stables in the centre. The daughters of the house were the dairy-maids; the food was chiefly the products of the dairy and the flesh of the cattle. The cow was, however, the most important animal, and gave its name to many plants, and even to the clouds and stars, in which men saw heavenly herds passing over the firmament above them.

But the Aryans were not an exclusively pastoral people; they certainly had barley, and perhaps other cereals, before their dispersion. They possessed the plough, the mill for grinding grain; they had hatchet,‡ hammer, auger. The Aryans were acquainted with several metals, among

* All Indian dates older than 300 B. C. are uncertain. for this one are given carefully and in full by Pictet.

The reasons

+ Our English word daughter, together with the Greek Ovyáτηp, the Zend dughdar, the Persian dochtar, &c., corresponds with the Sanskrit duhitur, which means both daughter and milkmaid.

Hatchet, in Sanskrit takshani, in Zend tasha, in Persian tash, Greek Toxos, Irish tuagh, Old German deksa, Polish tasak, Russian tesaku. And what is remarkable, the root tak appears in the name of the hatchet in the languages of the South Sea Islanders and the North American Indians.

which were gold, silver, copper, tin. They knew how to spin and weave to some extent; they were acquainted with pottery. How their houses were built we do not know, but they contained doors, windows, and fireplaces. They had cloaks or mantles, they boiled and roasted meat, and certainly used soup. They had lances, swords, the bow and arrow, shields, but not armor. They had family life, some simple laws, games, the dance, and wind instruments. They had the decimal numeration, and their year was of three hundred and sixty days. They worshipped the heaven, earth, sun, fire, water, wind; but there are also plain traces of an earlier monotheism, from which this nature-worship proceeded.

§ 4. The Aryans in India.

The Native Races. The

Vedic Age. Theology of the Vedas.

So far Comparative Philology takes us, and the next step forward brings us to the Vedas, the oldest works in the Hindoo literature, but at least one thousand or fifteen hundred years more recent than the times we have been describing. The Aryans have separated, and the Hindoos are now in India. It is eleven centuries before the time of Alexander. They occupy the region between the Punjaub and the Ganges, and here was accomplished the transition of the Aryans from warlike shepherds into agriculturists and builders of cities.*

The last hymns of the Vedas were written (says St. Martin) when they arrived from the Indus at the Ganges, and were building their oldest city, at the confluence of that river with the Jumna. Their complexion was then white, and they call the race whom they conquered, and who afterward were made Soudras, or lowest caste, blacks.+

* M. Vivien de Saint-Martin has determined more precisely than has been done before the primitive country of the Aryans, and the route followed by them in penetrating into India. They descended through Cabul to the Punjaub, having previously reached Cabul from the region between the Jaxartes and the Oxus.

+ The Rig-Veda distinguishes the Aryans from the Dasjus. Mr. Muir quotes a multitude of texts in which Indra is called upon to protect the former and slay the latter.

*

as

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The chief gods of the Vedic age were Indra, Varuna, Agni, Savitri, Soma. The first was the god of the atmosphere; the second, of the Ocean of light, or Heaven; the third, of Fire; the fourth, of the Sun; and the fifth, of the Moon. Yama was the god of death. All the powers of nature were personified in turn, earth, food, wine, months, seasons, day, night, and dawn. Among all these divinities, Indra and Agni were the chief. But behind this incipient polytheism lurks the original monotheism, each of these gods, in turn, becomes the Supreme Being. The universal Deity seems to become apparent, first in one form of nature and then in another. Such is the opinion of Colebrooke, who says that "the ancient Hindoo religion recognizes but one God, not yet sufficiently discriminating the creature from the Creator." And Max Müller says: "The hymns celebrate Varuna, Indra, Agni, &c., and each in turn is called supreme. The whole mythology is fluent. The powers of nature become moral beings."

Max Müller adds: "It would be easy to find, in the numerous hymns of the Veda, passages in which almost every single god is represented as supreme and absolute. Agni is called 'Ruler of the Universe'; Indra is celebrated as the Strongest god, and in one hymn it is said, 'Indra is stronger than all.' It is said of Soma that ‘he conquers every one.""

But clearer traces of monotheism are to be found in the Vedas. In one hymn of the Rig-Veda it is said: "They call him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni ; then he is the wellwinged heavenly Garutmat; that which is One, the wise call it many ways; they call it Agni, Yama, Matarisvan.”

Nothing, however, will give us so good an idea of the character of these Vedic hymns as the hymns themselves. I therefore select a few of the most striking of those which have been translated by Colebrooke, Wilson, M. Müller, E. Bumont, and others.

In the following, from one of the oldest Vedas, the unity of God seems very clearly expressed.

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RIG-VEDA, X. 121.

"In the beginning there arose the Source of golden light. He was the only born Lord of all that is. He established the Who is the God to whom we shall offer

earth, and this sky. our sacrifice?

"He who gives life. He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality, whose shadow is death. Who is the God to whom we shall

offer our sacrifice?

"He who through his power is the only king of the breathing and awakening world. He who governs all, man and beast. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

"He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river. He whose these regions are, as it were his two arms. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm. He through whom heaven was stablished; nay, the highest heaven. He who measured out the light in the air. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by his will, look up, trembling inwardly. He over whom the rising sun shines forth. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our

sacrifice?

“Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and lit the fire, thence arose he who is the only life of the bright gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?

"He who by his might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice; he who is God above all gods. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifice ?

"May he not destroy us, he the creator of the earth, or he, the righteous, who created heaven; he who also created the bright and mighty waters. Who is the god to whom we shall offer our sacrifices?”*

* Müller's Ancient Sanskrit Literature, page 569. He adds the following remarks: "There is nothing to prove that this hymn is of a particu larly ancient date. On the contrary, there are expressions in it which seem to belong to a later age. But even if we assign the lowest possible date to this and similar hymns, certain it is that they existed during the Mantra period, and before the composition of the Brahmanas. For, in spite of all the indications of a modern date, I see no possibility how

The oldest and most striking account of creation is in the eleventh chapter of the tenth Book of the Rig-Veda. Colebrooke, Max Müller, Muir, and Goldstücker, all give a translation of this remarkable hymn and speak of it with admiration. We take that of Colebrooke, modified by that of Muir:—

"Then there was no entity nor non-entity; no world, no sky, nor aught above it; nothing anywhere, involving or involved; nor water deep and dangerous. Death was not, and therefore no immortality, nor distinction of day or night. But THAT ONE breathed calmly* alone with Nature, her who is sustained within him. Other than Him, nothing existed [which] since [has been]. Darkness there was; [for] this universe was enveloped with darkness, and was indistinguishable waters; but that mass, which was covered by the husk, was [at length] produced by the power of contemplation. First desire + was formed in his mind; and that became the original productive seed; which the wise, recognizing it by the intellect in their hearts, distinguish as the bond of nonentity with entity.

"Did the luminous ray of these [creative acts] expand in the middle, or above, or below? That productive energy became providence [or sentient souls], and matter [or the elements]; Nature, who is sustained within, was inferior; and he who sustains was above.

"Who knows exactly, and who shall in this world declare, whence and why this creation took place? The gods are subsequent to the production of this world: then who can know whence it proceeded, or whence this varied world arose, or whether it upholds [itself] or not? He who in the highest heaven is the ruler of this universe, he knows, or does not

know."

If the following hymn, says Müller, were addressed only to the Almighty, omitting the word "Varuna," it would not disturb us in a Christian Liturgy:

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we could account for the allusions to it which occur in the Brâhmanas, or for its presence in the Sanhitâs, unless we admit that this poem formed part of the final collection of the Rig-veda-Sanhitâ, the work of the Mantra period.

* Max Müller translates "breathed, breathless by itself; other than it nothing since has been.'

+ Max Müller says,

"Love fell upon it."

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