The Ṛigvēda is essentially a priestly book; but it is not entirely a priestly book. Much of the thought to which it gives utterance is popular in origin and sentiment, and is by no means of the lowest order. On this groundwork the priests have built up a system of hieratic thought and ritual of their own, in which there is much that deserves a certain respect. There is a good deal of fine poetry in it. There is also in it some idea of a law of righteousness: in spite of much wild and unmoral myth and fancy, its gods for the most part are not capricious demons but spirits who act in accordance with established laws, majestic and wise beings in whom are embodied the highest ideals to which men have risen as yet. Moreover, the priests in the later books have given us some mystic hymns containing vigorous and pregnant speculations on the deepest questions of existence, speculations which are indeed fanciful and unscientific, but which nevertheless have in them the germs of the powerful idealism that is destined to arise in centuries to come. On the other hand, the priests have cast their system in the mould of ritualism. Ritual, ceremony, sacrifice, professional benefit—these are their predominant interests. The priestly ceremonies are conceived to possess a magical power of their own; and the fixed laws of ritual by which these ceremonies are regulated tend to eclipse, and finally even to swallow up, the laws of moral righteousness under which the gods live. A few generations more, and the priesthood will frankly announce its ritual to be the supreme law of the universe. Meanwhile they are becoming more and more indifferent to the personalities of the gods, when they have preserved any; they are quite ready to ascribe attributes of one deity to another, even attributes of nominal supremacy, with unscrupulous inconsistency and dubious sincerity; for the personalities of the different gods are beginning to fade away in their eyes, and in their mind is arising the conception of a single universal Godhead.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. e.g. RV. III. xxxii. 12.
[2] Sir E. A. W. Budge, Literature of the Ancient Egyptians, p. 21 ff., and Gods of the Egyptians, i, pp. 32 f., 43.
[3] Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion, p. 37 f.
[4] Budge, Lit. of the Egyptians, p. 21; Erman, ut supra, p. 37 f.
[5] It is even possible that in one case, that of Osiris, a hero in Egypt may have eclipsed by his personality the god whom he ousted. See Sir J. W. Frazer's Adonis, Attis, Osiris, ii, p. 200, and Sir W. Ridgeway's Dramas and Dramatic Dances, etc., p. 94 ff.
[6] See Oldenberg, Religion des Veda, p. 64 f.
[7] I follow in the interpretation of this hymn E. Sieg, Die Sagenstoffe des Ṛgveda, i. p. 76 ff. Cf. on the subject Ved. Stud., i. p. 211, ii. pp. 42-54. Charpentier, Die Suparṇasage, takes a somewhat different view of RV. IV. xxvi.-xxvii., which, however, does not convince me; I rather suspect that RV. IV. xxvi. 1 and 4, with their mention of Manu, to whom the sōma was brought, are echoes of an ancient and true tradition that Indra was once a mortal.
[8] The other legend in MS. II. i. 12, that Aditi bound the unborn Indra with an iron fetter, with which he was born, and of which he was able to rid himself by means of a sacrifice, is probably later.