The careful investigation of Scherman[19] leads essentially to the same conception of Yama as that we have advocated. Scherman believes that Yama was first a human figure, and was then elevated to, if not identified with, the sun. Scherman's only error is in disputing the generally-received opinion, one that is on the whole correct, that Yama in the early period is a kindly sovereign, and in later times becomes the dread king of horrible hells. Despite some testimony to the contrary, part of which is late interpolation in the epic, this is the antithesis which exists in the works of the respective periods.
The most important gods of the era of the Rig Veda we now have reviewed. But before passing on to the next period it should be noticed that no small number of beings remains who are of the air, devilish, or of the earth, earthy. Like the demons that injure man by restraining the rain in the clouds, so there are bh[=u]ts, ghosts, spooks, and other lower powers, some malevolent, some good-natured, who inhabit earth; whence demonology. There is, furthermore, a certain chrematheism, as we have elsewhere[20] ventured to call it, which pervades the Rig Veda, the worship of more or less personified things, differing from pantheism in this,[21] that whereas pantheism assumes a like divinity in all things, this kind of theism assumes that everything (or anything) has a separate divinity, usually that which is useful to the worshipper, as, the plough, the furrow, etc. In later hymns these objects are generally of sacrificial nature, and the stones with which soma is pressed are divine like the plant. Yet often there is no sacrificial observance to cause this veneration. Hymns are addressed to weapons, to the war-car, as to divine beings. Sorcery and incantation is not looked upon favorably, but nevertheless it is found.
Another class of divinities includes abstractions, generally female, such as Infinity, Piety, Abundance, with the barely-mentioned Gung[=u], R[=a]k[=a], etc. (which may be moon-phases). The most important of these abstractions[22] is 'the lord of strength,' a priestly interpretation of Indra, interpreted as religious strength or prayer, to whom are accredited all of Indra's special acts. Hillebrandt interprets this god, Brahmanaspati or Brihaspati, as the moon; Müller, somewhat doubtfully, as fire; while Roth will not allow that Brihaspati has anything to do with natural phenomena, but considers him to have been from the beginning 'lord of prayer.' With this view we partly concur, but we would make the important modification that the god was lord of prayer only as priestly abstraction Indra in his higher development. It is from this god is come probably the head of the later trinity, Brahm[=a], through personified brahma, power; prayer, with its philosophical development into the Absolute. Noteworthy is the fact that some of the Vedic Aryans, despite his high pretensions, do not quite like Brihaspati, and look on him as a suspicious novelty. If one study Brihaspati in the hymns, it will be difficult not to see in him simply a sacerdotal Indra. He breaks the demon's power; crushes the foes of man; consumes the demons with a sharp bolt; disperses darkness; drives forth the 'cows'; gives offspring and riches; helps in battle; discovers Dawn and Agni; has a band (like Maruts) singing about him; he is red and golden, and is identified with fire. Although 'father of gods,' he is begotten of Tvashtar, the artificer.[23]
Weber has suggested (V[=a]japeya Sacrifice, p. 15), that Brihaspati takes Indra's place, and this seems to be the true solution, Indra as interpreted mystically by priests. In RV. i. 190, Brihaspati is looked upon by 'sinners' as a new god of little value. Other minor deities can be mentioned only briefly, chiefly that the extent of the pantheon may be seen. For the history of religion they are of only collective importance. The All-gods play an important part in the sacrifice, a group of 'all the gods,' a priestly manufacture to the end that no god may be omitted in laudations that would embrace all the gods. The later priests attempt to identify these gods with the clans, 'the All-gods are the clans' (Çat. Br. v. 5. 1.10), on the basis of a theological pun, the clans, viças, being equated with the word for all, viçve. Some modern scholars follow these later priests, but without reason. Had these been special clan-gods, they would have had special names, and would not have appeared in a group alone.
The later epic has a good deal to say about some lovely nymphs called the Apsarasas, of whom it mentions six as chief (Urvaç[=i], Menak[=a], etc.).[24] They fall somewhat in the epic from their Vedic estate, but they are never more than secondary figures, love-goddesses, beloved of the Gandharvas who later are the singing guardians of the moon, and, like the lunar stations, twenty-seven in number. The Rik knows at first but one Gandharva (an inferior genius, mentioned in but one family-book), who guards Soma's path, and, when Soma becomes the moon, is identified with him, ix. 86. 36. As in the Avesta, Gandharva is (the moon as) an evil spirit also; but always as a second-rate power, to whom are ascribed magic (and madness, later). He has virtually no cult except in soma-hymns, and shows clearly the first Aryan conception of the moon as a demoniac power, potent over women, and associated with waters.
Mountains, and especially rivers, are holy, and of course are deified. Primitive belief generally deifies rivers. But in the great river-hymn in the Rig Veda there is probably as much pure poetry as prayer. The Vedic poet half believed in the rivers' divinity, and sings how they 'rush forth like armies,' but it will not do to inquire too strictly in regard to his belief.
He was a poet, and did not expect to be catechized. Of female divinities there are several of which the nature is doubtful. As Dawn or Storm have been interpreted Saram[=a] and Sarany[=u], both meaning 'runner.' The former is Indra's dog, and her litter is the dogs of Yama. One little poem, rather than hymn, celebrates the 'wood-goddess' in pretty verses of playful and descriptive character.
Long before there was any formal recognition of the dogma that all gods are one, various gods had been identified by the Vedic poets. Especially, as most naturally, was this the case when diverse gods having different names were similar in any way, such as Indra and Agni, whose glory is fire; or Varuna and Mitra, whose seat is the sky. From this casual union of like pairs comes the peculiar custom of invoking two gods as one. But even in the case of gods not so radically connected, if their functions were mutually approximate, each in turn became credited with his neighbor's acts. If the traits were similar which characterized each, if the circles of activity overlapped at all, then those divinities that originally were tangent to each other gradually became concentric, and eventually were united. And so the lines between the gods were wiped out, as it were, by their conceptions crowding upon one another. There was another factor, however, in the development of this unconscious, or, at least, unacknowledged, pantheism. Aided by the likeness or identity of attributes in Indra, Savitar, Agni, Mitra, and other gods, many of which were virtually the same under a different designation, the priests, ever prone to extravagance of word, soon began to attribute, regardless of strict propriety, every power to every god. With the exception of some of the older divinities, whose forms, as they are less complex, retain throughout the simplicity of their primitive character, few gods escaped this adoration, which tended to make them all universally supreme, each being endowed with all the attributes of godhead. One might think that no better fate could happen to a god than thus to be magnified. But when each god in the pantheon was equally glorified, the effect on the whole was disastrous. In fact, it was the death of the gods whom it was the intention of the seers to exalt. And the reason is plain. From this universal praise it resulted that the individuality of each god became less distinct; every god was become, so to speak, any god, so far as his peculiar attributes made him a god at all, so that out of the very praise that was given to him and his confreres alike there arose the idea of the abstract godhead, the god who was all the gods, the one god. As a pure abstraction one finds thus Aditi, as equivalent to 'all the gods,'[25] and then the more personal idea of the god that is father of all, which soon becomes the purely personal All-god. It is at this stage where begins conscious premeditated pantheism, which in its first beginnings is more like monotheism, although in India there is no monotheism which does not include devout polytheism, as will be seen in the review of the formal philosophical systems of religion.
It is thus that we have attempted elsewhere[26] to explain that phase of Hindu religion which Müller calls henotheism.
Müller, indeed, would make of henotheism a new religion, but this, the worshipping of each divinity in turn as if it were the greatest and even the only god recognized, is rather the result of the general tendency to exaltation, united with pantheistic beginnings. Granting that pure polytheism is found in a few hymns, one may yet say that this polytheism, with an accompaniment of half-acknowledged chrematheism, passed soon into the belief that several divinities were ultimately and essentially but one, which may be described as homoiotheism; and that the poets of the Rig Veda were unquestionably esoterically unitarians to a much greater extent and in an earlier period than has generally been acknowledged. Most of the hymns of the Rig Veda were composed under the influence of that unification of deities and tendency to a quasi-monotheism, which eventually results both in philosophical pantheism, and in the recognition at the same time of a personal first cause. To express the difference between Hellenic polytheism and the polytheism of the Rig Veda the latter should be called, if by any new term, rather by a name like pantheistic polytheism, than by the somewhat misleading word henotheism. What is novel in it is that it represents the fading of pure polytheism and the engrafting, upon a polytheistic stock, of a speculative homoiousian tendency soon to bud out as philosophic pantheism.