[727]. The general development of Ra is plain, though details are lacking. It may be inferred from his name (which means 'sun') that he was originally the physical sun. Traces of his early crudeness appear in the stories of his destruction of mankind, and of the way in which Isis, by a trick, got from him his true name and, with it, his power.[1251] With the growth of his native land (Lower Egypt) he became the great lord of the sun, and finally universal lord;[1252] his supremacy was doubtless due in part to the political importance of On (Heliopolis), the seat of his chief shrine. What other circumstances contributed to his victory over Horus are not recorded; in general it may be supposed that political changes occasioned the recedence of the latter.
The primacy of Ra is illustrated by the fact that Amon was identified with him. Amon, originally the local god of Thebes,[1253] became great in the South as Ra became great in the North, rising with the growth of the Theban kingdom. His hold on the people, and particularly (as was natural) on the priests, is shown in a noteworthy way by the episode of Amenhotep IV's attempt to supplant him by establishing a substantially monotheistic cult of the sun-god Aton; the attempt was successful only during the king's life—after his death Amon, under the vigorous leadership of the Theban priests, resumed his old position and maintained it until the first break-up of the national Egyptian government. But it was Amon-Ra that became supreme from the fourteenth century onward. The combination of the names was made possible by the social and political union of the two divisions of the land, and it was Ra who gave special glory to Amon.[1254]
[728]. A different line of growth appears in the history of Osiris—he owed his eminence mainly to his connection with the dead. Where his cult arose is not known; he was a very old god, possibly prominent in the predynastic period;[1255] at a later time the importance of Abydos, the chief seat of his worship, may have added to his reputation. But the ceremonies of his cult and the myths that grew up about his name indicate that he was originally a deity of vegetation, the patron of the underground productive forces of the earth, and so, naturally, he became the lord of the Underworld,[1256] and eventually (as ethical conceptions of life became more definite in Egypt) the embodiment of future justice, the determiner of the moral character and the everlasting fate of men. Why he and not some other underground god became Underworld judge the data do not make clear. His association with the death and revivification of plants gave a peculiarly human character to his mythical biography and a dramatic and picturesque tone to his cult.[1257] Of all ancient lords of the Otherworld it is Osiris that shows the most continuous progress and reaches the highest ethical plane—a fact that must be referred to the intense interest of the Egyptians in the future.[1258]
[729]. The three most prominent female deities of the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor of Dendera, Neith (Nit, Neit) of Sais, and Isis of Buto, exhibit one and the same type of character, and each is occasionally identified with one of the others. Hathor was widely worshiped, but was not otherwise especially noteworthy. The famous inscription said to have stood in the temple of Neith at Sais ("What is and what shall be and what has been am I—my veil no one has lifted"[1259]) seems not to be immediately connected with any important religious movement, though it is in keeping with the liberal and mystical tendency of the later time. The third goddess, Isis, had a more remarkable history. Her beginnings are obscure, and she appears in the inscriptions later than the other two. She may have been a local deity,[1260] brought into association with Osiris (as his sister or his wife) through the collocation of their cults, and thus sharing his popularity; or she may have been a late theological creation.[1261] Whatever her origin, as early as the sixteenth century B.C. she appears as a great magician (poisoning and healing Ra by magic arts),[1262] then (along with Osiris) as civilizer, and finally as model wife and mother, and as serene and beneficent mistress of the land. It was, apparently, in this last character that she became the gathering-point for the higher religious and ethical ideas of the time, and the central figure in a religious scheme that was widely adopted in and out of Egypt and seemed to be a formidable rival of Christianity.[1263]
[730]. India. It is in India that we find the most varied and most sweeping development in the functions and positions of deities—a result due in part to the long-continued movement of philosophic thought, partly to changes in the popular religious point of view occasioned by modifications of the social life.[1264]
The etymology of the name Varuna is doubtful, but the representation of him in the Rig-Veda points to the sky as his original form—he is a clear example of a sky-god who becomes universal. Of his earliest history we have no information—in the most ancient records he is already fully formed. In the Rig-Veda he embraces the whole of life—he is absolute ruler and moral governor, he punishes sin and forgives the penitent. In conjunction with Mitra he is the lord of order.[1265] Mitra, originally the physical sun, is naturally associated with Varuna, but in the Rig-Veda occupies a generally subordinate position, though he appears sometimes to have the attributes of his associate; the two together embody a lofty ethical conception. In accordance with the Hindu fondness for metaphysical abstractions and generalizations the nature god Varuna in the course of time yielded the primacy to Prajapati, 'lord of beings,'[1266] who in his turn gave way to the impersonal Brahma. In the popular cults as well as in philosophical systems Varuna sank (or perhaps returned) to the position of patron of phenomena of nature—there was no longer need of him.
[731]. A god of somewhat uncertain moral character is Indra, who as a nature god is closely connected with the violent phenomena of the air (rain, thunder, and lightning). In this relation he is often terrible, often beneficent, but with low tastes that it is difficult to explain. His fondness for soma, without which he attempts nothing, is perhaps a priestly touch, a glorification of the drink that played so important a part in the ritual; or he may herein be an expression of popular tastes. The sensuous character of the heaven of which he (as air-god) is lord arose doubtless in response to early conceptions of happiness;[1267] it is not unlike the paradise of Mohammed, which is to be regarded not as immoral, but only as the embodiment of the existing conception of happy family life. Yet Indra also became a universal god, the controller of all things, and it was perhaps due to his multiform human character as warrior and rain-giver[1268] (in his victorious conflict with the cloud-dragon), and as representative of bodily enjoyment, that he became the favorite god of the people. It is not hard to understand why Agni, fire, should be associated with him and share his popularity to some extent; but the importance of fire in the sacrifice gave Agni a peculiar prominence in the ritual.
[732]. The most curious case of transformation and exaltation is found in the history of Soma, at first a plant whose juice was intoxicating, then a means of ecstatic excitement, a gift to the gods, the drink of the gods, and finally itself a god invested with the greatest attributes. This divinization of a drink was no doubt mainly priestly—it is a striking illustration of the power of the association of ideas, and belongs in the same general category with the deification of abstractions spoken of above.[1269]
[733]. An example of a god leaping from an inferior position to the highest place in the pantheon is afforded by Vishnu, a nature god of some sort, described in the early documents as traversing the universe in three strides. Relatively insignificant in the earlier period and in the Upanishads, he appears in the epic, and afterwards, as the greatest of the gods, and, in the form of his avatar Krishna, becomes the head of a religion which has often been compared with Christianity in the purity of its moral conceptions. By his side in this later time stands his rival Çiva, the chief figure in a sect or system which shared with Vishnuism the devotion of the later Hindus. The rise of these two gods is to be referred probably to the dissatisfaction in the later times with the phenomenal character which still clung, in popular feeling, to the older deities. Varuna, once supreme, sank after a while to the position of a god of rain, and Indra, Agni, and Soma were frankly naturalistic, while the impersonal Brahma was too vague to meet popular demands. What the later generation wanted was a god personal and divorced from physical phenomena, supreme, ethically high, but invested with warm humanity. These conditions were fulfilled by Vishnu and Çiva, and particularly by Krishna; that is, the later thought constructed these new deities in accordance with the demand of the higher and the lower religious feeling of the time: the two sides of the human demand, the genial and the terrible, are embodied, the first in Vishnu, the second in Çiva.
[734]. The primeval pair, Heaven and Earth, though represented as the parents of many gods and worshiped with sacrifices, play no great part in the Hindu religious system. Dyaus, the Sky, never attained the proportions of the formally identical Zeus and Jupiter. His attributes are distinctly those of the physical sky. The higher rôle is assigned to Varuna, who is the sky conceived of as a divine Power divorced from merely physical characteristics;[1270] the mass of phenomena connected with the sky (thunder, lightning, and such like) are isolated and referred to various deities. Prithivi, the Earth, in like manner, retains her physical attributes, and does not become the nourishing mother of all things.[1271]