Curiosities of Superstition, and Sketches of Some Unrevealed Religions. Adams William Henry Davenport
seems large and portentous, or dim and inscrutable. The fire from heaven, the reverberating thunder, the gale that crashed down the mountain ravines and felled great trees before it, the planetary bodies steadily revolving in their courses, the stream with its glow and its ripple, the dense shadows of the haunted forest, the recurring rush and roll of the sea, – all these were things which for early man had a constant novelty and strangeness, and seemed incessantly to claim his reverent consideration. He could not account for them: whether a bane or a delight they were equally unintelligible. They represented, therefore, some Power which he could regard only with awe and reverence. And of that Power the sun would necessarily be the chief type and symbol. All life and love seemed dependent upon it. The trees throve, and the flowers bloomed, and the banks rippled, and the birds sang, and the harvests ripened, through the sun. It was the source of light and heat, of the vigour and activity of nature. While it shone men’s hearts leaped with joy, and the wheels of labour revolved with pleasant toil; but when it disappeared, and the darkness usurped the heavens, the spirits sank, and humanity felt in the change of scene a presentiment and presage of the darkness of death. All vitality, all motion centred in the sun. “It was like a deep furrow,” says Max Müller, “which that heavenly luminary drew, in its silent procession from east to west, over the fallow mind of the gazing multitude; and in the impression left there by the first rising and setting of the sun, there lay the dark seed of a faith in a more than human being, the first intimation of a life without beginning, of a world without end.” Who can wonder that the Chaldean, and the Celt, alike ascended to the high places, and paid their worship of symbolic fires to the great fountain of life and light, the central force of the universe? Who can wonder that all the Aryan tribes made it, so to speak, the nucleus of their religious systems? The Hindu peasant, centuries ago, addressed it in his heart in much the same language which Gawain Douglas afterwards employed. As its glorious orb rose above the gleaming horizon, he sent forth to it a message of welcome:
“Welcome, the lord of light and lamp of day;
Welcome, fosterer of tender herbis green;
Welcome, quickener of flourished flowers’ sheen;
Welcome, support of every root and vein;
Welcome, comfort of all kind fruits and grain;
Welcome, the bird’s green beild upon the brier;
Welcome, master and ruler of the year;
Welcome, welfare of husbands at the ploughs;
Welcome, repairer of woods, trees, and boughs;
Welcome, depainter of the bloomit meads;
Welcome, the life of everything that spreads.”
And because it was all this, and more, the Hindu saw in it something greater than a mere luminary, – a planetary body; he endowed it with Divine attributes, he made it a god, he gave it his worship, and by an elaborate symbolism kept it ever before him.
A necessary consequence of this deification of the sun was the deification of the other bodies that shared with him the firmament; but as they were inferior in splendour and utility, they naturally became recognized as inferior gods. And when once the religious feeling of humanity had gone thus far, its further development became only a question of time. The homage given to the stars was soon extended to the winds and streams and groves. A legion of gods sprang into existence, and for a while they seemed to satisfy the needs and aspirations of humanity. But as the thoughts of men expanded, as their intellect ripened with the ages, and grew strong enough to doubt, and bold enough to question the conclusions of the common faith, a revolt took place against “the contradictions of a mythological phraseology, though it had been hallowed by sacred customs and traditions.” Men grew tired of so complex and cumbrous a religious system, and having observed a definite fundamental unity of nature in spite of the diversity of its operations, they came to believe in a similar unity of the Divine Power. The idea of a supreme authority once entertained, men soon understood that supremacy meant oneness; that if there were a God over all, He must be one and indivisible. One of the earliest proclamations of this sublime truth is found in the Rig-Veda, which says:3—
“That which is one the sages speak of in many ways – they call it Agni, Yama, Malarisvan.”
And again:4—
“In the beginning there came the Source of golden light – He was the only true Lord of all that is – He stablished the earth and this sky: – Who is God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who gives life, He who gives strength; whose blessing all the bright gods desire; whose shadow is immortality; whose shadow is death: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He who through His power is the only King of the breathing and awakening world; He who governs all, man and beast: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He whose power these snowy mountains, whose power the sea proclaims, with the distant river – He whose these regions are, as it were, His two arms: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He through whom the sky is bright and the earth firm – He through whom heaven was stablished – nay, the highest heaven – He who measured out the light in the air: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He to whom heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up, trembling inwardly – He over whom the rising sun shines forth: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the reed and lit the fire, thence even He, who is the only life of the bright gods: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“He, who of His might looked even over the water-clouds, the clouds which gave strength and lit the sacrifice, He who is God above all gods: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?
“May He not destroy us – He the creator of the earth; or He, the righteous, who created Heaven; He who also created the bright and mighty waters: – Who is the God to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?”
The creed of a plurality of gods was one that carried in itself the seeds of its destruction. But there was another cause of weakness in their mortal attributes. Deriving their existence from the life of nature, they were subject to the accidents which that life involved. Thus, the sun at noonday might glow with splendour, but at night it was conquered by the shadows, and in winter it seemed to yield to some stronger Power. The moon waxed and waned, and was frequently eclipsed. As nature is subject to change, so also must be the gods that represent its forces and aspects. Such instability, such inherent weakness could not long satisfy the human mind; having risen to the height of the idea of one God, it next demanded that that God should be immutable. What rest, what contentment would it find in the supposition of deities as changeful as the winds? Tossed about by the currents of passion and feeling, buffeted by adverse circumstances, the soul yearns intensely for something fixed, something absolute, something unaffected by vicissitude, and finds it in the Divine Being, the same to-day as yesterday, and the same to-morrow as to-day.
These two opposite principles did not come into immediate collision; the priests of heathendom laboured long and earnestly to avert such a catastrophe. In Greece they succeeded by transferring the mortal or changeable element from “the gods” to “the heroes.”5 The human details in the characters and lives of Zeus and Apollon were transferred to the demi-gods or heroes represented as the sons or favourites of the gods. The two-fold character of Herakles as a god and a hero is recognized even by Herodotus; and indeed, some of the epithets applied to him sufficiently indicate his solar and originally divine personality. But to make some of the solar myths of which Herakles was the centre intelligible and conceivable, it became needful to depict Herakles as a mere human being, and to raise him to the seat of the Immortals only after he had endured toils and sufferings incompatible with the dignity of an Olympian divinity.
In Peru the same treatment was adopted, but with different results. A thinking, or, as he was called, a free-thinking Inca,
Rig-Veda, i. 164, 46.
Rig-Veda, x. 121, by Max Müller.
The thought in this paragraph, and several of the expressions, are from Max Müller.