A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 1 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
The process thus deducible from the main conditions is found actually
happening in more than one of the ancient cultures, as their history
is now sketched. In the Rig-Veda, which if not the oldest is the least
altered of the Eastern Sacred Books, the main line of change is obvious
enough. It remains so far matter of conjecture to what extent the early
Vedic cults contain matter adopted from non-Aryan Asiatic peoples; but
no other hypothesis seems to account for the special development of the
cult of Agni in India as compared with the content and development of
the other early Aryan systems, in which, though there are developments
of fire worship, the God Agni does not appear. [125] The specially
priestly character of the Agni worship, and the precedence it takes
in the Vedas over the solar cult of Mitra, which among the kindred
Aryans of Iran receives in turn a special development, suggest some
such grafting, though the relations between Aryans and the Hindu
aborigines, as indicated in the Veda, seem to exclude the possibility
of their adopting the fire-cult from the conquered inhabitants, [126]
who, besides, are often spoken of in the Vedas as "non-sacrificers,"
[127] and at times as "without Gods." [128] But this is sometimes
asserted even of hostile Aryans. [129] In any case the carrying
on of the two main cults of Agni and Indra side by side points to
an original and marked heterogeneity of racial elements; while the
varying combination with them of the worship of other deities, the
old Aryan Varuna, the three forms of the Sun-God Aditya, the Goddess
Aditi and the eight Adityas, the solar Mitra, Vishnu, Rudra, and
the Maruts, imply the adaptation of further varieties of hereditary
creed. The outcome is a sufficiently chaotic medley, in which the
attributes and status of the various Gods are reducible to no code,
[130] the same feats being assigned to several, and the attributes
of all claimed for almost any one. Here, then, were the conditions
provocative of doubt among the critical; and while it is only in the
later books of the Rig-Veda that such doubt finds priestly expression,
it must be inferred that it was current in some degree among laymen
before the hymn-makers avowed that they shared it. The God Soma,
the personification of wine, identified with the Moon-God Chandra,
[131] "hurls the irreligious into the abyss." [132] This may mean that
his cult, like that of his congener Dionysos in Greece, was at first
forcibly resisted, and forcibly triumphed. At an earlier period doubt
is directed against the most popular God, Indra, perhaps on behalf of a
rival cult. [133] Later it seems to take the shape of a half-skeptical,
half-mystical questioning as to which, if any, God is real.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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