There are thoughts to be found in the Veda which are excessively infantine, but again there are others of astonishing subtlety; perhaps they date from different epochs; but individualities are apparent in these hymns, and they anticipated by many centuries the greater number of contemporary writers who followed at a slower pace. The rishis who said, “There is one Being only, although the poets call him by a thousand names,” perfectly expressed this truth; and the Hindoos for centuries have invoked Indra, Mitra, Agni, and Savitar, though the more profound thinkers have protested against the traditional use of these names, just as Heracleitus 500 years before our era objected to the thousand names, the thousand temples, and the thousand legends of the Greek mythology.
The rishis in asking themselves how all things began were not content with representing the world as coming from the hands of clever workmen, were they even invisible; it was no great labour to discover that; but at times they had profounder thoughts. The sacred literatures of many ancient peoples have reached us, in fragments more or less complete; but the meditations which can equal those in the hymn 129 are rare.
“The One in the form of the Un-born was not—the luminous firmament existed not—nor the great vault of heaven—where was he hidden? Was it in the bottomless abyss? Death existed not—nor immortality. There was no distinction between day and night. The One breathed breathless by itself. Other than it there nothing since has been. There was darkness then; everything in the beginning was hidden in gloom—all was like the ocean, without a light. Then that germ which was covered by the husk—the One—was brought forth by the power of heat. On this germ was love—the springtime of the spirit—yes. And the poets whilst meditating upon it, discovered in their soul the link between created things and things not created. This spark, comes it from the earth—piercing all—penetrating through all—or comes it from the sky? There seeds were scattered, and powerful forces came into being; nature beneath, will and power above. Who knows the secret—who proclaimed whence this manifold creation sprang? The gods themselves came later into being; who knows whence this great creation sprang? He from whom all this great creation came—whether his will created or was mute. He, the most high seer, that is in highest heaven, he knows it—or perchance even he knows not.”
“Who knows whence this great creation sprang?” the Hindoos asked themselves, thousands of years before our era; and again, “What was the forest, what was the tree, from which they cut out heaven and earth? What was there before anything existed?” These questions, differently expressed, are found in many places in the Veda; every kind of problem is presented to us under the form of enigmas. The Hindoos seem to have had an idea that the visible world was preceded by something invisible, yet much more real than the world of phenomena in which we live; and that before apparitions existed, there was that which appeared afterwards in time and space.
These same questions will constantly be repeated in changing terms, through the coming centuries, whilst a heaven and earth remain.
The problem which occupied the powerful intellects of Hume and Kant, and which these philosophers named the principle of causality, was already exercising the brains of our fathers when they gave names for the first time to the sky, the sun, the dawn, and the other physical phenomena, by means of roots indicating activity; for the principle of causality manifested itself in the beginning, not in the direct search for a cause, but in the assertion of the existence of an agent. This mental labour, commenced and accomplished thousands of centuries ago by millions of human beings, deserves at least as much attention from us as the learned speculations of two modern philosophers, be they Hume or Kant.
So striking an object as the sun, even before possessing a definite name, must have been designated in some special way; perhaps as a simple circle, such as we find in the Egyptian hieroglyphics, in the Chinese writing, and in our astronomical almanacs; this symbol would give little opportunities to the mythologists; but when the idea arose that the sun was a ball, and that an analogy was found between a ball and an eye, man began to speak of the sun as the eye of the sky. We say readily in all languages, “God is omniscient,” but Hesiod, to express the same truth said, “The sun is the eye of Zeus who sees and knows all.” If the language appears childish to us, we must remember that it was the expression of a poet who lived long before the philosophers of Greece, we shall then be less struck by its harshness than by the happy and pure thought which has been expressed.
The sun has been an object of adoration with many of the primitive nations; it seems uncertain whether as the divinity himself or as his representative; most of the mythologists assure us that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun’s disc itself. The first step is invariably followed by a second, and a good example of development in religious belief is afforded by a Mexican legend. The story is told of the Inca Tupac Yupanqui, who, though reputed a son of the sun, began to doubt the divine omnipotence of his divine ancestor. At a great religious council, held at the consecration of the newly built temple of the sun at Cuzco, he rose before the assembled multitude to deny the divinity of the sun. “Many say,” he began, “that the sun is the maker of all things. But he who makes should abide by what he has made. Now many things happen when the sun is absent; therefore he cannot be the universal Creator. And that he is alive at all, is doubtful, for his journeys do not tire him. He is like a tethered beast who makes a daily round; he is like an arrow which must go whither it is sent, not whither it wishes. I tell you that he, our father and maker—the sun—must have a lord and master more powerful than himself, who constrains him to his daily circuit without pause or rest.”[95]
We can follow in the Vedic hymns the gradual development which changes the sun from a simple luminary, and the giver of daily light and life, to the preserver and ruler of the world. He who brings life and light to-day, is the same who brought life and light on the first of days; as he drives away the darkness of night, and as “the stars flee before the all-seeing sun, like thieves,” the eye fixed on men—the sun—sees the right and wrong and knows their thoughts.
Almost all peoples have raised their eyes to the sky, the abode of the invisible Powers; and our ancestors, who addressed such fervent prayers to all the phenomena of nature could not fail to invoke it. But the sky shows itself under very varying aspects, it is sometimes the sky dazzling with light, then there is the lowering sky, or the sky that thunders, that rains; each time that it varies it changes its name; and these names must be known to man since it is always invoked under the special denomination of the power he is about to address. Varuna is one of the names of the sky, his physical characteristic reflects it, it is the vast vault or covering which protects the whole earth and its inhabitants; it is also the sky which is itself obscured when the sun disappears. In the Veda, Varuna is associated with Mitra, the light, thus giving rise to a concept of correlative gods representing night and day, morning and evening, heaven and earth.