The Atmospheric Drama.

We already know that the main, most vita fact of India’s physical life, that on which it hinges for good or for evil, is the timely arrival and beneficent violence of the southwestern monsoon, or, as the unscientific would say, the spring thunderstorms. This is what may be poetically termed the great atmospheric drama, with its incidents of war and conquest, its armies and its heroes. Here the imagination of the old Aryas of the Seven Rivers, with their characteristic naturalistic tendencies, revelled unstinted. Here, in the Middle Region — antdriksha—was Cloud land, which men watched day by day as the familiar but never palling scenes were enacted over and over again,—where INDRA—the Thunderer—was king, and the MARUTS—the Storm winds— were his friends and helpers ; where the clouds were sometimes actors and sometimes scenery, where the precious Cows were fought for, for  whose milk the long-suffering earth hungers and thirsts.

The sacredness of the Cow.

And here we are brought to the root of that  strange and apparently ineradicable superstition of Aryan India—the sacredness of the Cow. It has been suggested as one of the reasons, that the cow is the distinctive animal of Aryan life. For, absolutely unfitted by nature for the hardships of a nomadic existence, or for the torrid heat of the open steppe, it needs the protection of forest glades, the coolness of streams, the rest and sweetness of meadows exactly suiting the farming stage of culture which immediately follows on the nomadic and precedes or co-exists with the city-building stage, 1 since its wants and the care it demands are such as can be supplied only under favorable and settled conditions of life, even though still very primitive. And in that stage —the first in which the Aryan race appears to the historical vision—we can scarcely realize what a wonderful, god-given, all-sufficient treasure this gentle, homely, patient companion must have seemed to a people broken up into families or small clans, wholly dependent each on its own dairy and patch of tillage. The sweetest, most wholesome of foods flowed from her udder, easily transformed into the butter which, melted and clarified, fed the sacred flame on the home-altar, while her mate, the fiery bullock, supplied meat for the burnt-offering, or, tamed and trained, became the obedient laboring steer. There were no bounds to the gratitude and reverence, the loving care they paid this living embodiment of a kindly providence, until they came to consider the cow as something holy and half divine. It became to them the sacred animal, the object of almost worship, which it remains to this day among their descendants in India.

The Cloud-Kine. The Drought-Fiends.

To this sacredness, founded on such homely, positive grounds, a more imaginative reverence was added by the active poetical fancy which filled the world with the mythical creations that were to beggar  the invention of all coming ages. The real, live, earthly cow had her glorified double in the heavens, or, rather, the Middle-Region, antdriksha ; there roam the herds of dark, light, or dappled cloud-kine,  whose udder pours down their pure sweet milk, the rain, in life-giving showers, for men and animals, and plants. And, as though to show how intimate the connection between the two, they both the cloud and the cow—have the same name—Go, — and that again is a root expressive of motion, walking. The clouds moving across the sky may first have suggested a likeness to kine moving across the pasture ; with a little observation the comparison completed itself. The heavenly pastures and the heavenly herds, and, consequently, the gods as heavenly herdsmen, just as the heavenly ocean with the cloud-ships, are standing mythical images, on which the poetry of all times has rung endless changes. In fact, the most cursory perusal of the Rig-Veda places the Middle-Region before us as a sort of mirror-world, showing an exact reflection, only magnified and glorified, of this lower world, with all its doings, relations, and conditions. This appliesto all the incidents of what may be called the atmospheric drama, a perfect counterpart of the wars or perhaps rather the tribal raids of earth, and which, like the latter, takes the homely form of a conflict for the possession of cattle, or of women and maidens, these being the two staple articles of intertribal booty, the standing objects of mutual covetousness and clan feuds. “ The phenomena of thunder and lightning,” remarks Mr. Muir in his study on Indra, “ almost inevitably suggest the idea of a conflict between opposing forces ; even we ourselves, in our more prosaic age, often speak of the war or strife of the elements. The other appearances of the sky, too, would afford abundant materials for poetical imagery. The worshipper would at one time transform the fantastic shapes of the clouds into the chariots and horses of his god, and at another time would seem to perceive in their piled-up masses the cities and castles which he was advancing to overthrow.” Or mountains.  There is nothing a solid dark bank of clouds, with its broken outlines against the horizon, more resembles, and many a mariner longingly looking out for land has been deceived by this mirage of the sea. These castles, these mountains with their deep, dark caves, are the fastnesses where in  wicked robbers hide the stolen cows or maidens, over whom the dragon cloud-fiend, Ahi, the Serpent, who loves to lie on the top of mountains, and the shaggy monster, VRITRA, the Enfolder, keep watch, until the Thunderer’s lightning spear pierces and tears them to pieces, while the castle walls or mountain sides burst open under the resonant blows of his fiery mace, and the captives come forth. “For” (if we may be permitted to quote from a former volume of our own) “ there are clouds and clouds, and not all by any means bode or bring rain. If some generously pour down the precious, pure liquid which is life and drink to the parched, pining earth, others keep it back, wickedly hide it, swell and spread with the treasure they cover and enclose, and will not give it up until pierced and torn asunder by the lightning spear of the angry thunder-god .” 1 And those whose ill-fortune it has been to live through a genuine drought in a semi-tropical clime, will heartily endorse the remark that nothing can be more disheartening, when every breathing and growing thing, nay, the inanimate soil itself, with its gray, dusty, rifted surface, is panting and gaping for rain to bring moisture and coolness, than to see the clouds collecting and floating across the sky day after day without discharging their contents. And now that we clearly understand what may be called the plot of the drama—very simple and in substance always the same—we may introduce the actors and let the various scenes unfold themselves, keeping, as we did in the preceding chapter, to the only really forcible and impressive method : that of letting the ancient poets speak, i. e., quoting as much as possible from the Rig-Veda itself.

Atmospheric battles.

It is generally understood that Vedic worship knew of no temples or images of its gods, and this must of course apply to Indra, the king of the Middle- Region—him who may well be termed the champion-god of Aryan India.  Yet one is almost tempted to doubt the fact in his case and that of his faithful comrades and escort the Maruts—the Storm-Winds*—who ride forth to battle with him, an eager, rushing troop—so realistic and complete are the descriptions of their personal appearance, strength, and warlike equipment, down to the smallest details. Indra is shown us borne on a shining chariot, a golden whip in his hand, the thunderbolt in his arm, helmeted with gold, and not only are hislong, strong arms spoken of, and the beauty of his nose and ruddy cheeks, but we are told how his golden beard is violently agitated by the swift motion, as he guides his mettlesome steeds and hurls his bolts around. Again the Maruts. Not much is left to the imagination when they are presented to us as driving chariots borne along with the fury of boisterous winds by their swift tawny horses or dappled deer, and described as follows : “ Spears rest upon your shoulders ; ye have anklets on your feet, golden ornaments on your breasts, ornaments on your ears, fiery lightnings in your hands, and golden helmets on your heads.” Together with Indra they are bidden by Agni, the priest-messenger, to the sacrificer’s banquet ; together they quaff huge quantities of the invigorating soma, and together rush to do battle against Vritra, whom they helped Indra to overcome, to pierce through and through, to cut to pieces, till his remains strew the mountain side, and the waters which he imprisoned leap merrily forth, and roll and tumble and pour down on both worlds. Brush and color could hardly give a more vivid picture—and for that picture Indian warrior kings and their gorgeously arrayed body-guards have surely sat. It is anthropomorphism running riot. The question is not : how did the hero of the Middle-Region become the war god of men, the champion and protector of his Aryan and native worshippers? but: how could he have helped becoming both.

Anthropomorphism.

Anthropomorphism, however, seldoms keeps long within such sober bounds—certainly not in India. In its tendency to bring the superhuman within the mind’s ken, by clothing it in human, familiar garb, it but too easily slips into exaggeration, and, in exalting the object of worship, is apt to represent greatness by material size. Scarcely any of the Indra hymns, which are more numerous than those to any other deity, are free from this taint of fancy, or rather weakness of expression, to which, however, together with some images of the most grotesque grossness, we owe some of great poetical beauty. Let us pick out a few at random, as they occur scattered through the hymns.