Let us take a rapid survey of the course of this feeling in antiquity. Pantheism has always been the home of a special tenderness for Nature, and the poetry of India is full of intimate dealings between man and plants and animals.
They are found in the loftiest flights of religious enthusiasm in the Vedas, where, be it only in reference to the splendour of dawn or the 'golden-handed sun,' Nature is always assumed to be closely connected with man's inner and outer life. Later on, as Brahminism appeared, deepening the contemplative side of Hindoo character, and the drama and historical plays came in, generalities gave way to definite localizing, and in the Epics ornate descriptions of actual landscape took independent place. Nature's sympathy with human joys and griefs was taken for granted, and she played a part of her own in drama.
In the Mahâbhârata, when Damajanti is wandering in search of her lost Nala and sees the great mountain top, she asks it for her prince.
Oh mountain lord!
Far seen and celebrated hill, that cleav'st
The blue o' the sky, refuge of living things,
Most noble eminence, I worship thee!...
O Mount, whose double ridge stamps on the sky
Yon line, by five-score splendid pinnacles
Indented; tell me, in this gloomy wood