[100] Rig-Veda, viii. 78. 1.
[101] Yasts, xiii. 89. Cf. ibid. xiii. 90.
[102] Ibid. i. 3, 4, 10, 11, 19.
In earlier chapters we have often noticed how curses gradually develop into genuine prayers, and vice versa may a prayer develop into a curse or spell. Dr. Rivers observes that the formulæ used in Toda magic have the form of prayers.[103] So also Assyrian incantations are often dressed in the robe of supplication, and end with the formula, “Do so and so, and I shall gladden thine heart and worship thee in humility.”[104] Vedic texts which were not originally meant as charms became so afterwards. Incantations are comparatively rare in the Rig-Veda, and seem even to be looked upon as objectionable, but towards the end of the Vedic period the reign of Brahma, the power of prayer, as the supreme god in the Indian Pantheon began to dawn.[105] Brahma is a force by which the gods act, by which they are born, and by which the world has been formed;[106] but it is also the prayer which ascends from the altar to heaven and by means of which man wrests from the gods the boon he demands[107]—“the prayer governs them.”[108] This omnipresent force is personified in Brahmaṇaspati, the lord of prayer, who resides in the highest heaven but of whom not only every separate god but the priest himself becomes a manifestation at the moment he pronounces the mantras or sacred texts.[109] It is a current saying in India that the whole universe is subject to the gods, that the gods are subject to the mantras, that the mantras are subject to the Brahmans, and that therefore the Brahmans are the real gods.[110] In Zoroastrianism prayers are not made efficacious by devotion and fervency, but to the words themselves belongs a mysterious power and the mere recitation of them, if correct and faultless, brings that power into action;[111] in the Yasts prayer is regarded as a goddess, as the daughter of Ahura Mazda.[112] In ancient Egypt, M. Maspero observes, “la prière n’était pas comme chez nous une petition que l’homme présente au dieu, et que le dieu est libre d’accepter ou de refuser à son gré: c’était une formule dont les terms ont une valeur impérative, et dont l’énonciation exacte oblige le dieu à concéder ce qu’on lui demande.”[113] Greek literature supplies other instances of men conjuring their gods by incantations;[114] the word ἀρά means both prayer and curse.[115] And “in the Roman, as in the majority of the old Italian cults, prayer is a magic formula, producing its effect by its own inherent quality.”[116]
[103] Rivers, Todas, pp. 450, 453.
[104] Tallqvist, ‘Die assyrische Beschwörungsserie Maqlû,’ in Acta Soc. Scient. Fennicæ, xx. 22.
[105] Oldenberg, op. cit. p. 311 sqq. Hopkins, op. cit. p. 149. Roth, ‘Brahma und die Brahmanen,’ in Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellsch. i. 67, 71. Darmesteter, Essais orientaux, p. 132.
[106] Atharva-Veda, xi. 5. 5. Barth, op. cit. p. 38.
[107] Roth, loc. cit. p. 66 sqq. Barth, op. cit. p. 38. Darmesteter, Ormazd et Ahriman, p. 101.
[108] Rig-Veda, vi. 51. 8.