The exalted virtues of Soma have raised it to the rank of those divinities who dispense immortality.
“Where there is eternal light, in the world where the sun is placed, in that immortal, imperishable world place me, O Soma, where life is free, in the third heaven of heavens, there make me immortal.”[92]
What is the third heaven? It is an expression with which we are familiar, but what does it mean? The Aryans also call the children of Rudra to their help; they are allied to Indra and are called Maruts. They fill the air with alarming sounds; these noise-producing beings are the representatives of storms and tempests, they never appear alone in the Veda, they traverse space in groups of from twenty-five to eighty in number, and they make the earth tremble.
“Where are you going? towards whom do you go when you descend from on high like a blast of fire? May power be with thee and thy race, O Rudra. Come to us, Maruts, come and help us as quickly as lightning before the rain! Let loose, O devourer, your anger like an arrow against the proud enemy of the poets.”[93]
A deep problem now presents itself. What was there before anything existed? Two contradictory ideas appear in the hymns, and the conflict must have been trying.
“Sages have said: In the beginning the world was—a single world—there was not a second. Others have said: In the beginning this world had no existence, and out of nothing, what now is, came.”
Much confusion of thought reigned in the human mind. The world must surely have been made from something, and by certain agents; but then, how were the agents themselves formed? and what material served them for the making of the world?
Other questions followed. “Who has seen the firstborn? Where was the life, the blood, the soul of the world? Who went to ask this from any that knew it? What was the forest? what was the tree out of which they shaped heaven and earth? Ye wise, seek in your mind on what he stood when he held the world.”[94]
Our ancestors would not have been human if they had not yielded to the temptation of representing the invisible makers of the world by some personality. They therefore speak of carpenters and workmen “who have cunning hands; clever artificers who forge the lightning.” Is it those who have made all that is visible? They know not. It is certain that in speaking of carpenters, workmen, thunderers, tearers, rainers, men approached, perhaps unconsciously, the domain of causes, which from the beginning has been the ancient foundation of all that is transcendental in our knowledge. It could not be otherwise, since our reason is so constituted that it admits nothing but what is either cause or effect.