If we take some of the most ancient and most popular daily prayers, used in the daily Sandhyâvandana[[12]], we find that one of them is the famous Gâyatrî, addressed to Savitri, the sun:—
“We meditate on the adorable light of the divine Savitri, that he may rouse our thoughts.”
This Savitri, the sun, is, of course, more than the fiery ball that rises from the sea or over the hills, but nevertheless the real sun serves as a symbol, and it was that symbol which suggested to the suppliant the divine power manifested in the sun. Hence almost everything that could be predicated of the sun was predicated of Savitri also, whatever was true of the sky, Dyaus, fem., was supposed to be true of Dyaus, masc., Zeus or Jupiter also. As early an authority as Kâtyâyana in his Index to the Rig-Veda declared that all the gods invoked in the Vedic hymns can be reduced to three, to Agni, fire and light, on earth, to Vâyu, air, in the atmosphere, and to Sûrya, sun, in the sky, but he adds that all three are in the end meant for one, for Pragâpati, the Lord of creation. And later on he says, that there is only one deity, namely the Great Self, Mahân Âtmâ, and some say that he is the sun, (Sûrya), or that the sun is he. One of the prayers in the Sandhyâvandana begins with Asâv Âdityo Brahma, that Âditya (sun) is Brahman, and in the Taitt. Upanishad, VIII, 8, it is said: “He who dwells in man and he who dwells in the sun, are one and the same.” The same idea may be likewise deduced from the hymns themselves. In X, 158, 1, we read: “May the sun (Sûrya) protect us from the sky, the wind (Vâyu) from mid-air, and fire (Agni) from the earth;” whereas in another hymn, 115, 1, we read: “the Sun is the Self or soul of all that moves and rests.” Here we can clearly watch the gradual transition from the visible sun to the invisible agent of the sun which may have taken centuries to evolve, and if we consider how almost everything on earth is dependent on the sun for its very life, we can understand how a perfectly natural road led from the sun as seen in heaven, to the sun as the highest, the supreme, nay, in the end, as the only deity. This religious and philosophical development of the concept of the sun did not, however, prevent its simultaneous mythological growth. This is the famous Solar Theory, which, no doubt, has been much exaggerated, but which, if properly understood, admits, we know, of cheap cavil, but never of refutation; nay, which, if but rightly understood, has really received more support from its supposed critics than from its originators and supporters. One of the most intelligible names given to the sun was Asva, the racer, or Dadhikrâvan or Vâgin, horse. And while at one time the sun was a racer, at another the sun was conceived as approaching men and standing on a golden chariot which was drawn by horses, as in Greek mythology. Thus we read, Rig-Veda I, 35, 2: “The god Savitri (the sun), approaching on the dark-blue sky, sustaining mortals and immortals, comes on his golden chariot, beholding all the worlds.”
I have been assured that the noisy cannonade which was directed for years against this explanation of Vedic and Aryan mythology, was really meant as a kind of salute; but I should have much preferred a few twenty-pounders to test the solidity of my entrenched position. When at last I was charged with never having taken any notice of certain illustrious critics, it seemed to me but courteous to respond to that appeal. But there was really little to answer because there was so little difference between my critics and myself. They evidently thought that I was opposed to their anthropological theories, whereas on the contrary I rejoiced in them, whenever they rested on scholarly evidence. I had myself dabbled in the grammar of the Mohawk and Hottentot languages, because I considered grammar a sine quâ non of mythology, nor was I much disturbed when my Sanskrit scholarship was found fault with by critics who did not know the Sanskrit alphabet. That real Sanskrit scholars should have differed on certain etymologies, was quite another thing, nor was it difficult to come to an understanding with them. Either they were mistaken on certain points or I was, but no real Sanskrit scholar would ever join in the clamour of those who maintained that Greek, Latin, and Teutonic mythology had quite a different origin from that of the Veda. Such things pass and are soon forgotten, and no one who, like myself, remembers the time when Bopp was laughed at by classical scholars for the foolish idea that Greek and Latin grammar should be explained by a comparison with Sanskrit would be much disturbed by those who did not blush to say that there was only one tenable equation between the names of classical and Vedic deities, viz. Dyaus = Zeus. But have those ready writers ever reflected what such an admission would really mean, and how it would disable the whole of their machinery? What would happen if the name of Jehovah, or even of Yahveh, turned up suddenly in the Veda? Thinking is difficult, but it is sometimes useful. Such things will be remembered hereafter among the Curiosities of Literature. No one is infallible, but because we have occasionally a fall on the ice, it does not follow that we must not skate or even cut figures on the ice. There is plenty of work to do for those who are willing to work either at the language of the Rig-Veda, or at that of the Maoris, but without some of that grammatical drudgery, I doubt whether mere assertions, or repeating the opinions of others, will really forward our knowledge of the origines of our own race.
It is surely as clear as daylight to anybody who will read a number of the hymns of the Rig-Veda that they refer to the principal phenomena of nature, and that in that respect they require no antecedents, but are intelligible to any child. Yet for a number of years there has been a constant outcry from certain anthropologists, who asserted that the Vedic hymns were modern in spirit, modern in language, and modern in their pantheon, and that this pantheon had nothing whatever to do with the phenomena of nature, and had no relationship whatever with the gods of the other Aryan nations, particularly of Greeks, Romans, and Teutons. They looked upon the Vedic religion as the last phase in a development, the earlier stages of which had to be studied among savage races, such as the well-known Kamilaroi, Wiraturei, Waihvun, &c. Have they forgotten this? It is true, no doubt, that the ideas expressed in the Veda presupposed a long development, even a period of savagery, considering that all civilised nations must once have been less civilised, uncivilised, or even savages. There are quite sufficient survivals of savagery even in the Veda itself, only it is Aryan savagery, not savagery of the Pacific Islanders, African negroes, or Dravidians. If only some cases could be produced in which the Australian blacks shared any of the ideas of the Veda, or displayed similar ideas, only more savage, every true scholar would welcome them with open arms. Our expectations have been raised to a very high pitch in that direction, and I still hope that in time they may be fulfilled. In the meantime it is fortunate that the mere clamour against the Veda has at last subsided, so that now people only marvel how it could ever have arisen.
Most of the names of the Vedic deities implied at first activity only, but very soon personality also, and what is most important, some of them were found to be exactly the same in Sanskrit, in Greek, Latin, German, and Slavonic, being only changed in every one of these languages according to the phonetic rules peculiar to each. Such verbal coincidences had to be accounted for, and they could not be accounted for except by the admission that there was once a period, a truly historical period, during which the framers of these mythological names and the believers in these physical powers, or, as we are accustomed to call them, these natural Gods or Devas, were still living together as one language, people or nation. Such an admission, inevitable as it was in the eyes of all true scholars, roused at the time a certain dislike and incredulity among those who like to shrug their shoulders at every new discovery. Forgetful of the fact that proper names in all languages undergo certain phonetic changes which do not apply to ordinary appellatives, they thought they could belittle the value of such equations as Sâramêya = Ἑρμείας, Saranyû = Ἐρινύς, Haritas = Χάριτες by pointing out that strictly speaking the Greek forms should have been Ἑρεμείας and Ἑρινύς, while the Greek Charites, though identical in names, seemed to resist all efforts to trace them back to the same source from which sprang the bright horses of the sun-god.
This cheap scepticism, however, or, as it is now called, this higher criticism, may safely be said to belong to the past. I am old enough to remember the conversion of such giants as Gottfried Hermann, Otfried Müller, and Welcker to the principles of scholarship, as taught by Bopp, Grimm, and others. That was indeed a real triumph. In 1825, Otfried Müller, the real founder of a scientific mythology (wissenschaftliche Mythologie), was sighing for a translation of the Rig-Veda. In 1899, when a great part of it has been made accessible by the patient labours of English, French, and German scholars, some writers, who call themselves mythologists, seem to take a pride in ignoring the existence of the Veda. How far we have advanced since 1825, may be gathered from a statement to which I should be very sorry to affix a name, “that the only generally accepted case of similarity between Vedic and classical mythological names was that of Dyaush-pitar, Ζεὺς πατήρ, and Jupiter.” Has Benfey taught in vain? Even in 1839, Benfey (Wörterbuch, II, 334) knew that Ushas was = Eos, Agni (fire) = ignis, (ibid., II, 217), Sûrya = Helios (ibid., I, 458), to say nothing of later equations which, even if disapproved of, or disproved, would leave the general principles of Comparative Mythology exactly as they were fifty years ago. Has all this been forgotten, or never been learnt?
The discovery of Vedic literature which had retained the clearest traces of a common Aryan mythology, even if no equation besides that of Dyaush-pitar = Ζεὺς πατήρ had survived, was really the discovery of a new world, of a terra antiquis incognita, and gave us a glimpse at a whole period of thought, of which no relics whatever could be found anywhere else, whether in Greece, Italy, or Germany.
But highly interesting as these Vedic hymns are to us, in spite of, or, I should say, on account of their simplicity and childishness, anybody who came to know them at first hand had to confess that they seem quite unfit to satisfy the religious cravings of a later generation. They contain praises of the physical gods, they implore their help, they render thanks for benefits supposed to have come from their hands, light and life from Dyaus, rain and food from a closely related power, called Indra, warmth and light from Agni, new life every morning from Ushas or Eos. All this is historically and psychologically full of interest, but there is little only, except here and there, of exalted religious thought, of poetry or philosophy, still less of any records of historical events. Besides, their language is so difficult that, as yet, it makes a satisfactory translation of the whole Veda a perfect impossibility. This may seem surprising in the days when hieroglyphic and cuneiform inscriptions have been so readily translated. But the fact is that most of those inscriptions are very straightforward, they hardly contain a conditional or a relative sentence. We read of Kings and Kings of Kings, of their battles from year to year, of the towns they founded, of the conquests they made, the captives they led away, the tribute they received and so on, and yet even such simple statements vary very considerably from year to year according as they are translated by bold or timid scholars. The Vedic hymns on the contrary, even when we understand every word of them, remain very obscure in their structure or construction; and though their texts are very firmly established from the time they were first reduced to writing and made the subject of the most minute grammatical study in India, even before the spreading of Buddhism, it is clear that before that time, when the Vedic texts existed in oral tradition only, they must have been exposed to many vicissitudes. There are verbal emendations so palpable that we can hardly understand how the mistakes could have arisen, and could have been tolerated for one moment. Besides that, there are evidently old and new hymns, yet all of them are recognised as belonging to the Veda, ever since the Vedic hymns were systematically collected.
The attempts that have been made to translate the Vedic hymns may be divided into four periods. The first consisted of those who followed Sâyana’s great Sanskrit commentary. This was the method followed by Rosen in 1830 and 1838, and again, in 1850, by H. H. Wilson. It was soon found out, however, that highly useful, nay indispensable, as the traditional interpretation of Sâyana might be, it was in many places quite impossible to follow him, because the true meaning was too clear, and that adopted by Sâyana too absurd. Rosen already used very freely the privilege of the scholar to choose between what is rational and what is not. Wilson had a stronger faith in Sâyana, and gave us in his translation the traditional rendering, even where his own sound sense rebelled against it.